Collected Stories Of William Faulkner

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Collected Stories of
WILLIAM FAULKNER

BOOKS BY WILLIAM FAULKNER

Soldiers Pay

Sartor Is
Mosqiritoes

The Sound and the Fury
As I Lay Dying

Sanctuary

These Thirteen

Light hi August

A Green Bough (Poems)

Doctor Mart mo

Pylon

Absalom , Absalom!

The Uircanqiiished

The Wild Palms

The Hamlet

Go Down, Moses

Intruder hi the Dust

Knight* s Gambit

Collected Stories of

WILLIAM FAULKNER

RANDOM HOUSE

New York

Acknowledgment is here made to the following magazines, in \vhich
some of the stories included in this volume first appeared: The American
Mercury, Voriun, liar per* s Magazine, The Saturday Evening Post, Scrib-
ticfs Magazine and The Sewanee Review.

Copyright, 1934, 1950, by Random House, Inc. Copyright, 1930, 1931,
1932, 1933, 1934, !935» I939' [94^ J94^i by William Faulkner. Copyright,
1930, by For inn. Copyright, 1930, 1932, 1934, !94r !942i *943» UY Curtis
Publishing Company.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Con-
ventions. Published in New York by Random House, Inc., and simul-
taneously in Toronto, Canada, by Random House of Canada, Limited.
Manufactured in the United States of America, by The Haddon Craftsmen,
Inc., Scranton. Pa.

Contents

I. THE COUNTRY PAGE

Earn Burning 3

Shingles for the Lord 27

The Tall Men 45

A Bear Hunt 63

Tivo Soldiers 81

Shall Not Perish 101

II. THE VILLAGE

A Rose for Entity 1 19

Hair 1 3 i

Centaur in Brass 149

Dry September 169

Death Drag 185

Elly 207

Uncle Willy 225

Mule in the Yard . " 249

That Will Be Fine 265

That Evening Sun 289

III. THE WILDERNESS

Red Leaves 313

A Justice 343

A Courtship 361

381

Contents

IV. THE WASTELAND PAGE

Ad Astra 407

Victory 431

Crevasse 465

Turnabout 475

All the Dead Pilots 5 1 1

V. THE MIDDLE GROUND

Wash 535

Honor 551

Dr. Mar tin o 565

Fox Hunt 587

Pennsylvania Station 609

Artist at Home 627

T£e Brooch 647

Af y Grandmother Millard 667

Golden Land 701

There Was a Queen 727

Mountain Victory 745

VI. BEYOND

Beyond 781

Black Music 799

Tfce Leg 823

Mistral 843

Divorce in Naples 877

Carcassonne 895

I • THE COUNTRY

Barn Burning

Shingles for the Lord

The Tall Men

A Bear Hunt

Two Soldiers

Shall Not Perish

Barn Burning

THE STORE in which the Justice of the Peace's court was sit-
ting smelled of cheese. The boy, crouched on his nail keg at
the back of the crowded room, knew he smelled cheese, and
more: from where he sat he could see the ranked shelves
close-packed with the solid, squat, dynamic shapes of tin
cans whose labels his stomach read, not from the lettering
which meant nothing to his mind but from the scarlet devils
arid the silver curve of fish — this, the cheese which he knew
he smelied and the hermetic meat which his intestines be-
lieved he smelled coming in intermittent gusts momentary
and brief between the other constant one, the smell and sense
just a little of fear because mostly of despair and grief, the
old fierce pull of blood. He could not see the table where the
Justice sat and before which his father and his father's enemy
(our enemy he thought in that despair; ourn! mine and hisn
both! He's my father!} stood, but he could hear them, the
two of them that is, because his father had said no word yet:

"But what proof have you, Mr. Harris?"

"I told you. The hog got into my corn. I caught it up and
sent it back to him. He had no fence that would hold it. I told
him so, warned him. The next time I put the hog in my pen.
When he came to get it I gave him enough wire to patch
up his pen. The next time I put the hog up and kept it. I rode
down to his house and saw the wire I gave him still rolled on

4 The Country

to the spool in his yard. I told him he could have the hog
when he paid me a dollar pound fee. That evening a nigger
came with the dollar and got the hog. He was a strange
nigger. He said, 'He say to tell you wood and hay kin burn.'
I said, 'What?' 'That whut he say to tell you,' the nigger
said. 'Wood and hay kin burn.' That night my barn burned.
I got the stock out but I lost the barn."

"Where is the nigger? Have you got him?"

"He was a strange nigger, I tell you. I don't know what
became of him."

"But that's not proof. Don't you see that's not proof?"

"Get that boy up here. He knows." For a moment the boy
thought too that the man meant his older brother until
Harris said, "Not him. The little one. The boy," and,
crouching, small for his age, small and wiry like his father,
in patched and faded jeans even too small for him, with
straight, uncombed, brown hair and eyes gray and wild as
storm scud, he saw the men between himself and the table
part and become a lane of grim faces, at the end of which
he saw the Justice, a shabby, collarless, graying man in
spectacles, beckoning him. He felt no floor under his bare
feet; he seemed to walk beneath the palpable weight of the
grim turning faces. His father, stiff in his black Sunday coat
donned not for the trial but for the moving, did not even
look at him. He aims for me to lie, he thought, again with
that frantic grief and despair. And I 'will have to do hit.

"What's your name, boy?" the Justice said.

"Colonel Sartoris Snopes," the boy whispered.

"Hey?" the Justice said. "Talk louder. Colonel Sartoris?
I reckon anybody named for Colonel Sartoris in this country
can't help but tell the truth, can they?" The boy said noth-
ing. Enemy! Enemy/ he thought; for a moment he could not
even see, could not see that the Justice's face was kindly nor
discern that his voice was troubled when he spoke to the man

Barn Burning 5

named Harris: "Do you want me to question this boy?" But
he could hear, and during those subsequent long seconds
while there was absolutely no sound in the crowded little
room save that of quiet and intent breathing it was as if he
had swung outward at the end of a grape vine, over a ravine,
and at the top of the swing had been caught in a prolonged
instant of mesmerized gravity, weightless in time.

"No!" Harris said violently, explosively. "Damnation!
Send him out of here!" Now time, the fluid world, rushed
beneath him again, the voices coming to him again through
the smell of cheese and sealed meat, the fear and despair and
the old grief of blood:

"This case is closed. I can't find against you, Snopes, but
I can give you advice. Leave this country and don't come
back to it."

His father spoke for the first time, his voice cold and
hai;sh, level, without emphasis: "I aim to. I don't figure to
stay in a country among people who . . ." he said something
unprintable and vile, addressed to no one.

"That'll do," the Justice said. "Take your wagon and get
out of this country before dark. Case dismissed."

His father turned, and he followed the stiff black coat, the
wiry figure walking a little stiffly from where a Confederate
provost's man's musket ball had taken him in the heel on a
stolen horse thirty years ago, followed the two backs now,
since his older brother had appeared from somewhere in the
crowd, no taller than the father but thicker, chewing tobacco
steadily, between the two lines of grim-faced men and out
of the store and across the worn gallery and down the sag-
ging steps and among the dogs and half-grown boys in the
mild May dust, where as he passed a voice hissed:

"Barnburner!"

Again he could not see, whirling; there was a face in a red
haze, moonlike, bigger than the full moon, the owner of it

6 The Country

half again his size, he leaping in the red haze toward the face,
feeling no blow, feeling no shock when his head struck the
earth, scrabbling up and leaping again, feeling no blow this
time either and tasting no blood, scrabbling up to see the
other boy in full flight and himself already leaping into pur-
suit as his father's hand jerked him back, the harsh, cold
voice speaking above him: "Go get in the wagon."

It stood in a grove of locusts and mulberries across the
road. His two hulking sisters in their Sunday dresses and his
mother and her sister in calico and sunbonnets were already
in it, sitting on and among the sorry residue of the dozen and
more movings which even the boy could remember — the
battered stove, the broken beds and chairs, the clock inlaid
with mother-of-pearl, which would not run, stopped at
some fourteen minutes past two o'clock of a dead and for-
gotten day and time, which had been his mother's dowry.
She was crying, though when she saw him she drew her
sleeve across her face and began to descend from the wagon.
"Get back," the father said.

"He's hurt. I got to get some water and wash his . . ."

"Get back in the wagon," his father said. He got in too,
over the tail-gate. His father mounted to the seat where the
older brother already sat and struck the gaunt mules two
savage blows with the peeled willow, but without heat. It
was not even sadistic; it was exactly that same quality which
in later years would cause his descendants to over-run the
engine before putting a motor car into motion, striking and
reining back in the same movement. The wagon went on,
the store with its quiet crowd of grimly watching men
dropped behind; a curve in the road hid it. Forever he
thought. Maybe he's done satisfied now, now that he has . . .
stopping himself, not to say it aloud even to himself. His
mother's hand touched his shoulder.

"Does hit hurt?" she said.

Barn Burning 7

"Naw," he said. "Hit don't hurt. Lemme be."
"Can't you wipe some of the blood off before hit dries?"
"I'll wash to-night," he said. "Lemme be, I tell you."
The Wagon went on. He did not know where they were
going. None of them ever did or ever asked, because it was
always somewhere, always a house of sorts waiting for them
a day or two days or even three days away. Likely his father
had already arranged to make a crop on another farm before
he ... Again he had to stop himself. He (the father) always
did. There was something about his wolflike independence
and even courage when the advantage was at least neutral
which impressed strangers, as if they got from his latent
ravening ferocity not so much a sense of dependability as a
feeling that his ferocious conviction in the rightness of his
own actions would be of advantage to all whose interest
lay with his.

That night they camped, in a grove of oaks and beeches
where a spring ran. The nights were still cool and they had
a fire against it, of a rail lifted from a nearby fence and cut
into lengths — a small fire, neat, niggard almost, a shrewd
fire; such fires were his father's habit and custom always,
even in freezing weather. Older, the boy might have re-
marked this and wondered why not a big one; why should
not a man who had not only seen the waste and extravagance
of war, but who had in his blood an inherent voracious
prodigality with material not his own, have burned every-
thing in sight? Then he might have gone a step farther and
thought that that was the reason: that niggard blaze was the
living fruit of nights passed during those four years in the
woods hiding from all men, blue or gray, with his strings of
horses (captured horses, he called them). And older still, he
might have divined the true reason: that the element of fire
spoke to some deep mainspring of his father's being, as the
element of steel or of powder spoke to other men, as the one

8 The Country

weapon for the preservation of integrity, else breath were
not worth the breathing, and hence to be regarded with
respect and used with discretion.

But he did not think this now and he had seen those same
niggard blazes all his life. He merely ate his supper beside it
and was already half asleep over his iron plate when his
father called him, and once more he followed the stiff back,
the stiff and ruthless limp, up the slope and on to the starlit
road where, turning, he could see his father against the stars
but without face or depth — a shape black, flat, and bloodless
as though cut from tin in the iron folds of the frockcoat
which had not been made for him, the voice harsh like tin
and without heat like tin:

"You were fixing to tell them. You would have told him."
He didn't answer. His father struck him with the flat of his
hand on the side of the head, hard but without heat, exactly
as he had struck the two mules at the store, exactly as he
would strike either of them with any stick in order to kill
a horse fly, his voice still without heat or anger: "You're
getting to be a man. You got to learn. You got to learn to
stick to your own blood or you ain't going to have any
blood to stick to you. Do you think either of them, any man
there this morning, would? Don't you know all they wanted
was a chance to get at me because they knew I had them
beat? Eh?" Later, twenty years later, he was to tell himself,
"If I had said they wanted only truth, justice, he would have
hit me again." But now he said nothing. He was not crying.
He just stood there. "Answer me," his father said.

"Yes," he whispered. His father turned.

"Get on to bed. We'll be there tomorrow."

To-morrow they were there. In the early afternoon the
wagon stopped before a paintless two-room house identical
almost with the dozen others it had stopped before even in
the boy's ten years, and again, as on the other dozen occa-

Barn Burning 9

sions, his mother and aunt got down and began to unload the
wagon, although his two sisters and his father and brother
had not moved.

"Likely hit ain't fitten for hawgs," one of the sisters said.

"Nevertheless, fit it will and you'll hog it and like it," his
father said. "Get out of them chairs and help your Ma un-
load."

The two sisters got down, big, bovine, in a flutter of
cheap ribbons; one of them drew from the jumbled wagon
bed a battered lantern, the other a worn broom. His father
handed the reins to the older son and began to climb stiffly
over the wheel. "When they get unloaded, take the team to
the barn and feed them." Then he said, and at first the boy
thought he was still speaking to his brother: "Come with

me."

"Me?" he said.

"Yes," his father said. "You."

'"Abner," his mother said. His father paused and looked
back — the harsh level stare beneath the shaggy, graying,
irascible brows.

"I reckon I'll have a word with the man that aims to begin
to-morrow owning me body and soul for the next eight
months."

They went back up the road. A week ago — or before last
night, that is — he would have asked where they were going,
but not now. His father had struck him before last night
but never before had he paused afterward to explain why;
it was as if the blow and the following calm, outrageous
voice still rang, repercussed, divulging nothing to him save
the terrible handicap of being young, the light weight of his
few years, just heavy enough to prevent his soaring free of
the world as it seemed to be ordered but not heavy enough
to keep him footed solid in it, to resist it and try to change
the course of its events.

io The Country

Presently he could see the grove of oaks and cedars and
the other flowering trees and shrubs where the house would
be, though not the house yet. They walked beside a fence
massed with honeysuckle and Cherokee roses and came to a
gate swinging open between two brick pillars, and now,
beyond a sweep of drive, he saw the house for the first time
and at that instant he forgot his father and the terror and
despair both, and even when he remembered his father again
(who had not stopped) the terror and despair did not re-
turn. Because, for all the twelve movings, they had sojourned
until now in a poor country, a land of small farms and fields
and houses, and he had never seen a house like this before.
Hit's big as a courthouse he thought quietly, with a surge
of peace and joy whose reason he could not have thought
into words, being too young for that: They are safe from
him. People 'whose lives are a part of this peace and dignity
are beyond his touch, he no more to them than a buzzing
wasp: capable of stinging for a little moment but that's all;
the spell of this peace and dignity rendering even the barns
and stable and cribs which belong to it impervious to the
puny flames he might contrive . . . this, the peace and joy,
ebbing for an instant as he looked again at the stiff black
back, the stiff and implacable limp of the figure which was
not dwarfed by the house, for the reason that it had never
looked big anywhere and which now, against the serene
columned backdrop, had more than ever that impervious
quality of something cut ruthlessly from tin, depthless, as
though, sidewise to the sun, it would cast no shadow. Watch-
ing him, the boy remarked the absolutely undeviating course
which his father held and saw the stiff foot come squarely
down in a pile of fresh droppings where a horse had stood
in the drive and which his father could have avoided by a
simple change of stride. But it ebbed only for a moment,
though he could not have thought this into words either,

Barn Burning L i

walking on in the spell of the house, which he could even
want but without envy, without sorrow, certainly never
with that ravening and jealous rage which unknown to him
walked in the ironlike black coat before him: Maybe be will
feel it too. Maybe it 'will even change him now from 'what
maybe he couldn't help but be.

They crossed the portico. Now he could hear his father's
stiff foot as it came down on the boards with clocklike final-
ity, a sound out of all proportion to the displacement of the
body it bore and which was not dwarfed either by the white
door before it, as though it had attained to a sort of vicious
and ravening minimum not to be dwarfed by anything — the
fiat, wide, black hat, the formal coat of broadcloth which had
once been black but which had now that friction-glazed
greenish cast of the bodies of old house flies, the lifted sleeve
which was too large, the lifted hand like a curled claw. The
door opened so promptly that the boy knew the Negro must
have been watching them all the time, an old man with neat
grizzled hair, in a linen jacket, who stood barring the door
with his body, saying, "Wipe yo foots, white man, fo you
come in here. Major ain't home nohow."

"Get out of my way, nigger," his father said, without
heat too, flinging the door back and the Negro also and
entering, his hat still on his head. And now the boy saw the
prints of the stiff foot on the door jamb and saw them appear
on the pale rug behind the machinelike deliberation of the
foot which seemed to bear (or transmit) twice the weight
which the body compassed. The Negro was shouting "Miss
Lula! Miss Lula!" somewhere behind them, then the boy,
deluged as though by a warm wave by a suave turn of
carpeted stair and a pendant glitter of chandeliers and a mute
gleam of gold frames, heard the swift feet and saw her too,
a lady — perhaps he had never seen her like before either —
in a gray, smooth gown with lace at the throat and an apron

12 The Country

tied at the waist and the sleeves turned back, wiping cake or
biscuit dough from her hands with a towel as she came up
the hall, looking not at his father at all but at the tracks on
the blond rug with an expression of incredulous amazement.

"I tried," the Negro cried. "I tole him to . . ."

"Will you please go away?" she said in a shaking voice.
"Major de Spain is not at home. Will you please go away?"

His father had not spoken again. He did not speak again.
He did not even look at her. He just stood stiff in the center
of the rug, in his hat, the shaggy iron-gray brows twitching
slightly above the pebble-colored eyes as he appeared to
examine the house with brief deliberation. Then with the
same deliberation he turned; the boy watched him pivot on
the good leg and saw the stiff foot drag round the arc of
the turning, leaving a final long and fading smear. His father
never looked at it, he never once looked down at the rug.
The Negro held the door. It closed behind them, upon the
hysteric and indistinguishable woman-wail. His father
stopped at the top of the steps and scraped his boot clean on
the edge of it. At the gate he stopped again. He stood for
a moment, planted stiffly on the stiff foot, looking back at
the house. "Pretty and white, ain't it?" he said. "That's
sweat. Nigger sweat. Maybe it ain't white enough yet to
suit him. Maybe he wants to mix some white sweat with it."

Two hours later the boy was chopping wood behind the
house within which his mother and aunt and the two sisters
(the mother and aunt, not the two girls, he knew that; even
at this distance and muffled by walls the flat loud voices of
the two girls emanated an incorrigible idle inertia) were
setting up the stove to prepare a meal, when he heard the
hooves and saw the linen-clad man on a fine sorrel mare,
whom he recognized even before he saw the rolled rug in
front of the Negro youth following on a fat bay carriage
horse — a suffused, angry face vanishing, still at full gallop,

Barn Burning 13

beyond the corner of the house where his father and brother
were sitting in the two tilted chairs; and a moment later,
almost before he could have put the axe down, he heard the
hooves again and watched the sorrel mare go back out of
the yard, already galloping again. Then his father began to
shout one of the sisters' names, who presently emerged back-
ward from the kitchen door dragging the rolled rug along
the ground by one end while the other sister walked behind
it.

"If you ain't going to tote, go on and set up the wash
pot," the first said.

"You, Sarty!" the second shouted. "Set up the wash pot!"
His father appeared at the door, framed against that shabbi-
ness, as he had been against that other bland perfection, im-
pervious to either, the mother's anxious face at his shoulder.

"Go on," the father said. "Pick it up." The two sisters
stooped, broad, lethargic; stooping, they presented an in-
credible expanse of pale cloth and a flutter of tawdry rib-
bons.

"If I thought enough of a rug to have to git hit all the
way from France I wouldn't keep hit where folks coming in
would have to tromp on hit," the first said. They raised the
rug.

"Abner," the mother said. "Let me do it."

"You go back and git dinner," his father said. "I'll tend to
this."

From the woodpile through the rest of the afternoon the
boy watched them, the rug spread flat in the dust beside the
bubbling wash-pot, the two sisters stooping over it with that
profound and lethargic reluctance, while the father stood
over them in turn, implacable and grim, driving them
though never raising his voice again. He could smell the
harsh homemade lye they were using; he saw his mother
come to the door once and look toward them with an ex-

14 The Country

pression not anxious now but very like despair; he saw his
father turn, and he fell to with the axe and .saw from the
corner of his eye his father raise from the ground a flattish
fragment of field stone and examine it and return to the pot,
and this time his mother actually spoke: "Abner. Abner.
Please don't. Please, Abner."

Then he was done too. It was dusk; the whippoorwills had
already begun. He could smell coffee from the room where
they would presently eat the cold food remaining from the
mid-afternoon meal, though when he entered the house he
realized they were having coffee again probably because
there was a fire on the hearth, before which the rug now lay
spread over the backs of the two chairs. The tracks of his
father's foot were gone. Where they had been were now
long, water-cloudy scoriations resembling the sporadic
course of a lilliputian mowing machine.

It still hung there while they ate the cold food and then
went to bed, scattered without order or claim up and down
the two rooms, his mother in one bed, where his father
would later lie, the older brother in the other, himself, the
aunt, and the two sisters on pallets on the floor. But his
father was not in bed yet. The last thing the boy remem-
bered was the depthless, harsh silhouette of the hat and coat
bending over the rug and it seemed to him that he had not
even closed his eyes when the silhouette was standing over
him, the fire almost dead behind it, the stiff foot prodding
him awake. "Catch up the mule," his father said.

When he returned with the mule his father was standing
in the black door, the rolled rug over his shoulder. " Ain't
you going to ride?" he said.

"No. Give me your foot."

He bent his knee into his father's hand, the wiry, surpris-
ing power flowed smoothly, rising, he rising with it, on to the
mule's bare back (they had owned a saddle once; the boy

Barn Burning 15

could remember it though not when or where) and with the
same effortlessness his father swung the rug up in front of
him. Now in the starlight they retraced the afternoon's path,
up the dusty road rife with honeysuckle, through the gate
and up the black tunnel of the drive to the lightless house,
where he sat on the mule and felt the rough warp of the rug
drag across his thighs and vanish.

"Don't you 'want me to help?" he whispered. His father
did not answer and now he heard again that stiff foot strik-
ing the hollow portico with that wooden and clocklike de-
liberation, that outrageous overstatement of the weight it
carried. The rug, hunched, not flung (the boy could tell
that even in the darkness) from his father's shoulder struck
the angle of wall and floor with a sound unbelievably loud,
thunderous, then the foot again, unhurried and enormous; a
light came on in the house and the boy sat, tense, breathing
steadily and quietly and just a little fast, though the foot
itself did not increase its beat at all, descending the steps
now; now the boy could see him.

"Don't you want to ride now?" he whispered. "We kin
both ride now," the light within the house altering now,
flaring up and sinking. He's coming down the stairs no<w,
he thought. He had already ridden the mule up beside the
horse block; presently his father was up behind him and he
doubled the reins over and slashed the mule across the neck,
but before the animal could begin to trot the hard, thin arm
came round him, the hard, knotted hand jerking the mule
back to a walk.

In the first red rays of the sun they were in the lot, putting
plow gear on the mules. This time the sorrel mare was in the
lot before he heard it at all, the rider collarless and even
bareheaded, trembling, speaking in a shaking voice as the
woman in the house had done, his father merely looking up

1 6 The Country

once before stooping again to the hame he was buckling, so
that the man on the mare spoke to his stooping back:

"You must realize you have ruined that rug. Wasn't there
anybody here, any of your women . . ." he ceased, shaking,
the boy watching him, the older brother leaning now in the
stable door, chewing, blinking slowly and steadily at nothing
apparently. "It cost a hundred dollars. But you never had a
hundred dollars. You never will. So I'm going to charge you
twenty bushels of corn against your crop. I'll add it in your
contract and when you come to the commissary you can
sign it. That won't keep Mrs. de Spain quiet but maybe it
will teach you to wipe your feet off before you enter her
house again."

Then he was gone. The boy looked at his father, who still
had not spoken or even looked up again, who was now ad-
justing the logger-head in the hame.

"Pap," he said. His father looked at him — the inscrutable
face, the shaggy brows beneath which the gray eyes glinted
coldly. Suddenly the boy went toward him, fast, stopping
as suddenly. "You done the best you could!" he cried. "If
he wanted hit done different why didn't he wait and tell
you how? He won't git no twenty bushels! He won't git
none! We'll gether hit and hide hit! I kin watch . . ."

"Did you put the cutter back in that straight stock like
I told you?"

"No, sir," he said.

"Then go do it."

That was Wednesday. During the rest of that week he
\vorked steadily, at what was within his scope and some
\vhich was beyond it, with an industry that did not need to
be driven nor even commanded twice; he had this from his
mother, with the difference that some at least of what he
did he liked to do, such as splitting wood with the half-size
axe which his mother and aunt had earned, or saved money

Barn Burning \j

somehow, to present him with at Christmas. In company
with the two older women (and on one afternoon, even one
of the sisters) , he built pens for the shoat and the cow which
were a part of his father's contract with the landlord, and
one afternoon, his father being absent, gone somewhere on
one of the mules, he went to the field.

They were running a middle buster now, his brother
holding the plow straight while he handled the reins, and
walking beside the straining mule, the rich black soil shear-
ing cool and damp against his bare ankles, he thought Maybe
this is the end of it. Maybe even that twenty bushels that
seems hard to have to pay for just a rug 'will be a cheap price
for him to stop forever and always from being what he used
to be; thinking, dreaming now, so that his brother had to
speak sharply to him to mind the mule: Maybe he even
won't collect the twenty bushels. Maybe it will all add up
and balance and vanish — corn, rug, fire; the terror and grief,
the being pulled two ways like between two teams of horses
— gone, done with for ever and ever.

Then it was Saturday; he looked up from beneath the
mule he was harnessing and saw his father in the black coat
and hat. "Not that," his father said. "The wagon gear."
And then, two hours later, sitting in the wagon bed behind
his father and brother on the seat, the wagon accomplished
a final curve, and he saw the weathered paintless store with
its tattered tobacco- and patent-medicine posters and the
tethered wagons and saddle animals below the gallery. He
mounted the gnawed steps behind his father and brother,
and there again was the lane of quiet, watching faces for the
three of them to walk through. He saw the man in spec-
tacles sitting at the plank table and he did not need to be
told this was a Justice of the Peace; he sent one glare of
fierce, exultant, partisan defiance at the man in collar and
cravat now, whom he had seen but twice before in his life,

1 8 The Country

and that on a galloping horse, who now wore on his face
an expression not of rage but of amazed unbelief which the
boy could not have known was at the incredible circum-
stance of being sued by one of his own tenants, and came
and stood against his father and cried at the Justice: "He
ain't done it! He ain't burnt . . ."

"Go back to the wagon," his father said.

''Burnt?" the Justice said. "Do I understand this rug was
burned too?"

"Does anybody here claim it was?" his father said. "Go
back to the wagon." But he did not, he merely retreated to
the rear of the room, crowded as that other had been, but
not to sit down this time, instead, to stand pressing among
the motionless bodies, listening to the voices:

"And you claim twenty bushels of corn is too high for
the damage you did to the rug?"

"He brought the rug to me and said he wanted the tracks
washed out of it. I washed the tracks out and took the rug
back to him."

"But you didn't carry the rug back to him in the same
condition it was in before you made the tracks on it."

His father did not answer, and now for perhaps half a
minute there was no sound at all save that of breathing, the
faint, steady suspiration of complete and intent listening.

"You decline to answer that, Mr. Snopes?" Again his
father did not answer. "I'm going to find against you, Mr.
Snopes. I'm going to find that you were responsible for the
injury to Major de Spain's rug and hold you liable for it.
But twenty bushels of corn seems a little high for a man in
your circumstances to have to pay. Major de Spain claims it
cost a hundred dollars. October corn will be worth about
fifty cents. I figure that if Major de Spain can stand a ninety-
five dollar loss on something he paid cash for, you can stand
a five-dollar loss you haven't earned yet. I hold you in dam-

Barn Burning 19

ages to Major de Spain to the amount of ten bushels of corn
over and above your contract with him, to be paid to him
out of your crop at gathering time. Court adjourned."

It had taken no time hardly, the morning was but half
begun. He thought they would return home and perhaps
back to the field, since they were late, far behind all other
farmers. But instead his father passed on behind the wagon,
merely indicating with his hand for the older brother to
follow with it, and crossed the road toward the blacksmith
shop opposite, pressing on after his father, overtaking him,
speaking, whispering up at the harsh, calm face beneath the
weathered hat: "He won't git no ten bushels neither. He
won't git one. We'll . . ." until his father glanced for an
instant down at him, the face absolutely calm, the grizzled
eyebrows tangled above the cold eyes, the voice almost
pleasant, almost gentle:

"You think so? Well, we'll wait till October anyway."

The matter of the wagon — the setting of a spoke or two
and the tightening of the tires — did not take long either, the
business of the tires accomplished by driving the wagon into
the spring branch behind the shop and letting it stand there,
the mules nuzzling into the water from time to time, and the
boy on the seat with the idle reins, looking up the slope and
through the sooty tunnel of the shed where the slow ham-
mer rang and where his father sat on an upended cypress
bolt, easily, either talking or listening, still sitting there when
the boy brought the dripping wagon up out of the branch
and halted it before the door.

"Take them on to the shade and hitch," his father said.
He did so and returned. His father and the smith and a third
man squatting on his heels inside the door were talking,
about crops and animals; the boy, squatting too in the am-
moniac dust and hoof-parings and scales of rust, heard his
father tell a long and unhurried story out of the time before

20 The Country

the birth of the older brother even when he had been a pro-
fessional horsetrader. And then his father came up beside
him where he stood before a tattered last year's circus poster
on the other side of the store, gazing rapt and quiet at the
scarlet horses, the incredible poisings and convolutions of
tulle and tights and the painted leers of comedians, and said,
"It's time to eat."

But not at home. Squatting beside his brother against the
front wall, he watched his father emerge from the store and
produce from a paper sack a segment of cheese and divide it
carefully and deliberately into three with his pocket knife
and produce crackers from the same sack. They all three
squatted on the gallery and ate, slowly, without talking;
then in the store again, they drank from a tin dipper tepid
water smelling of the cedar bucket and of living beech trees.
And still they did not go home. It was a horse lot this time,
a tall rail fence upon and along which men stood and sat
and out of which one by one horses were led, to be walked
and trotted and then cantered back and forth along the road
while the slow swapping and buying went on and the sun
began to slant westward, they — the three of them — watch-
ing and listening, the older brother with his muddy eyes and
his steady, inevitable tobacco, the father commenting now
and then on certain of the animals, to no one in particular.

It was after sundown when they reached home. They ate
supper by lamplight, then, sitting on the doorstep, the boy
watched the night fully accomplish, listening to the whip-
poorwills and the frogs, when he heard his mother's voice:
"Abner! No! No! Oh, God. Oh, God. Abner!" and he rose,
whirled, and saw the altered light through the door where
a candle stub now burned in a bottle neck on the table and
his father, still in the hat and coat, at once formal and bur-
lesque as though dressed carefully for some shabby and
ceremonial violence, emptying the reservoir of the lamp

Barn Burning 2 1

back into the five-gallon kerosene can from which it had
been filled, while the mother tugged at his arm until he
shifted the lamp to the other hand and flung her back, not
savagely or viciously, just hard, into the wall, her hands
flung out against the wall for balance, her mouth open and
in her face the same quality of hopeless despair as had been
in. her voice. Then his father saw him standing in the door.

"Go to the barn and get that can of oil we were oiling
the wagon with," he said. The boy did not move. Then he
could speak.

"What . . ." he cried. "What are you . . ."

"Go get that oil," his father said. "Go."

Then he was moving, running, outside the house, toward
the stable: this the old habit, the old blood which he had not
been permitted to choose for himself, which had been be-
queathed him willy nilly and which had run for so long
(and who knew where, battening on what of outrage and
savagery and lust) before it came to him. / could keep on,
he thought. / could run on and on and never look back,
never need to see his face again. Only I carft. I can't, the
rusted can in his hand now, the liquid sploshing in it as he
ran back to the house and into it, into the sound of his
mother's weeping in the next room, and handed the can to
his father.

"Ain't you going to even send a nigger?" he cried. "At
least you sent a nigger before!"

This time his father didn't strike him. The hand came
even faster than the blow had, the same hand which had set
the can on the table with almost excruciating care flashing
from the can toward him too quick for him to follow it,
gripping him by the back of his shirt and on to tiptoe before
he had seen it quit the can, the face stooping at him in
breathless and frozen ferocity, the cold, dead voice speaking
over him to the older brother who leaned against the table.

22 The Country

chewing with that steady, curious, sidewise motion of cows:

"Empty the can into the big one and go on. I'll catch up
with you/'

"Better tie him up to the bedpost," the brother said.

"Do like I told you," the father said. Then the boy was
moving, his bunched shirt and the hard, bony hand between
his shoulder-blades, his toes just touching the floor, across
the room and into the other one, past the sisters sitting with
spread heavy thighs in the two chairs over the cold hearth,
and to where his mother and aunt sat side by side on the
bed, the aunt's arms about his mother's shoulders.

"Hold him," the father said. The aunt made a startled
movement. "Not you," the father said. "Lennie. Take hold
of him. I want to see you do it." His mother took him by the
wrist. "You'll hold him better than that. If he gets loose
don't you know what he is going to do? He will go up
yonder." He jerked his head toward the road. "Maybe I'd
better tie him."

"I'll hold him," his mother whispered.

"See you do then." Then his father was gone, the stiff
foot heavy and measured upon the boards, ceasing at last.

Then he began to struggle. His mother caught him in
both arms, he jerking and wrenching at them. He would be
stronger in the end, he knew that. But he had no time to wait
for it. "Lemme go!" he cried. "I don't want to have to hit
you!"

"Let him go!" the aunt said. "If he don't go, before God,
I am going up there myself! "

"Don't you see I can't?" his mother cried. "Sarty! Sarty!
No! No! Help me, Lizzie!"

Then he was free. His aunt grasped at him but it was too
late. He whirled, running, his mother stumbled forward on
to her knees behind him, crying to the nearer sister: "Catch
him, Net! Catch him!" But that was too late too, the sister

Barn Burning 23

(the sisters were twins, born at the same time, yet either of
them now gave the impression of being, encompassing as
much living meat and volume and weight as any other two
of the family) not yet having begun to rise from the chair,
her head, face, alone merely turned, presenting to him in
the flying instant an astonishing expanse of young female
features untroubled by any surprise even, wearing only an
expression of bovine interest. Then he was out of the room,
out of the house, in the mild dust of the starlit road and the
heavy rifeness of honeysuckle, the pale ribbon unspooling
with terrific slowness under his running feet, reaching the
gate at last and turning in, running, his heart and lungs
drumming, on up the drive toward the lighted house, the
lighted door. He did not knock, he burst in, sobbing for
breath, incapable for the moment of speech; he saw the
astonished face of the Negro in the linen jacket without
knowing when the Negro had appeared.

"De Spain!" he cried, panted. "Where's . . ." then he saw
the white man too emerging from a white door down the
hall. "Barn!" he cried. "Barn!"

"What?" the white man said. "Barn?"

"Yes!" the boy cried. "Barn!"

"Catch him!" the white man shouted.

But it was too late this time too. The Negro grasped his
shirt, but the entire sleeve, rotten with washing, carried
away, and he was out that door too and in the drive again,
and had actually never ceased to run even while he was
screaming into the white man's face.

Behind him the white man was shouting, "My horse!
Fetch my horse!" and he thought for an instant of cutting
across the park and climbing the fence into the road, but he
did not know the park nor how high the vine-massed fence
might be and he dared not risk it. So he n»n on down the
drive, blood and breath roaring; presently he was in the

24 The Country

road again though he could not see it. He could not hear
either: the galloping mare was almost upon him before he
heard her, and even then he held his course, as if the very
urgency of his wild grief and need must in a moment more
find him wings, waiting until the ultimate instant to hurl
himself aside and into the weed-choked roadside ditch as the
horse thundered past and on, for an instant in furious sil-
houette against the stars, the tranquil early summer night sky
which, even before the shape of the horse and rider vanished,
stained abruptly and violently upward: a long, swirling roar
incredible and soundless, blotting the stars, and he springing
up and into the road again, running again, knowing it was
too late yet still running even after he heard the shot and,
an instant later, two shots, pausing now without knowing he
had ceased to run, crying "Pap! Pap!", running again before
he knew he had begun to run, stumbling, tripping over some-
thing and scrabbling up again without ceasing to run, look-
ing backward over his shoulder at the glare as he got up,
running on among the invisible trees, panting, sobbing,
"Father! Father!"

At midnight he was sitting on the crest of a hill. He did
not know it was midnight and he did not know how far he
had come. But there was no glare behind him now and he
sat now, his back toward what he had called home for four
days anyhow, his face toward the dark woods which he
would enter when breath was strong again, small, shaking
steadily in the chill darkness, hugging himself into the re-
mainder of his thin, rotten shirt, the grief and despair now no
longer terror and fear but just grief and despair. Father.
My father, he thought. "He was brave!" he cried suddenly,
aloud but not loud, no more than a whisper: "He was! He
was in the war! He was in Colonel Sartoris' cav'ry!" not
knowing that his father had gone to that war a private in
the fine old European sense, wearing no uniform, admitting

Barn Burning 25

the authority of and giving fidelity to no man or army or
flag, going to war as Malbrouck himself did: for booty — it
meant nothing and less than nothing to him if it were enemy
booty or his own.

The slow constellations wheeled on. It would be dawn
and then sun-up after a while and he would be hungry. But
that would be to-morrow and now he was only cold, and
walking would cure that. His breathing was easier now and
he decided to get up and go on, and then he found that he
had been asleep because he knew it was almost dawn, the
night almost over. He could tell that from the whippoor-
wills. They were everywhere now among the dark trees
below him, constant and inflectioned and ceaseless, so that,
as the instant for giving over to the day birds drew nearer
and nearer, there was no interval at all between them. He
got up. He was a little stiff, but walking would cure that
too as it would the cold, and soon there would be the sun.
He went on down the hill, toward the dark woods within
which the liquid silver voices of the birds called unceasing
— the rapid and urgent beating of the urgent and quiring
heart of the late spring night. He did not look back.

Shingles for the Lord

PAP GOT UP a good hour before daylight and caught the
mule and rid down to Killegrews' to borrow the froe and
maul. He ought to been back with it in forty minutes. But
the sun had rose and I had done milked and fed and was eat-
ing my breakfast when he got back, with the mule not only
in a lather but right on the edge of the thumps too.

"Fox hunting," he said. "Fox hunting. A seventy-year-old
man, with both feet and one knee, too, already in the grave,
squatting all night on a hill and calling himself listening to a
fox race that he couldn't even hear unless they had come
right up onto the same log he was setting on and bayed into
his ear trumpet. Give me my breakfast," he told maw.
"Whitfield is standing there right this minute, straddle of that
board tree with his watch in his hand."

And he was. We rid on past the church, and there was not
only Solon Quick's school-bus truck but Reverend Whit-
field's old mare too. We tied the mule to a sapling and hung
our dinner bucket on a limb, and with pap toting Killegrew's
froe and maul and the wedges and me toting our ax, we went
on to the board tree where Solon and Homer Bookwright,
with their froes and mauls and axes and wedges, was setting
on two upended cuts, and Whitfield was standing jest like
pap said, in his boiled shirt and his black hat and pants and
necktie, holding his watch in his hand. It was gold and in

28 The Country

the morning sunlight it looked big as a full-growed squash.

"You're late/' he said.

So pap told again about how Old Man Killegrew had been
off fox hunting all night, and nobody at home to lend him the
froe but Mrs. Killegrew and the cook. And naturally, the
cook wasn't going to lend none of Killegrew's tools out, and
Mrs. Killegrew was worser deaf than even Killegrew. If you
was to run in and tell her the house was afire, she would jest
keep on rocking and say she thought so, too, unless she began
to holler back to the cook to turn the dogs loose before you
could even open your mouth.

"You could have gone yesterday and borrowed the froe,"
Whitfield said. "You have known for a month now that you
had promised this one day out of a whole summer toward
putting a roof on the house of God."

"We ain't but two hours late," pap said. "I reckon the
Lord will forgive it. He ain't interested in time, nohow. He's
interested in salvation."

Whitfield never even waited for pap to finish. It looked to
me like he even got taller, thundering down at pap like a
cloudburst. "He ain't interested in neither! Why should He
be, when He owns them both? And why He should turn
around for the poor, mizzling souls of men that can't even
borrow tools in time to replace the shingles on His church, I
don't know either. Maybe it's just because He made them.
Maybe He just said to Himself: 'I made them; I don't know
why. But since I did, I Godfrey, I'll roll My sleeves up and
drag them into glory whether they will or no!' "

But that wasn't here nor there either now, and I reckon
he knowed it, jest like he knowed there wasn't going to
be nothing atall here as long as he stayed. So he put the
watch back into his pocket and motioned Solon and Homei
up, and we all taken off our hats except him while he stood
there with his face raised into the sun and his eyes shut and

Shingles for the Lord 29

his eyebrows looking like a big iron-gray caterpillar lying
along the edge of a cliff. "Lord," he said, "make them good
straight shingles to lay smooth, and let them split out easy;
they're for You," and opened his eyes and looked at us again,
mostly at pap, and went and untied his mare and dumb up
slow and stiff, like old men do, and rid away.

Pap put down the froe and maul and laid the three wedges
in a neat row on the ground and taken up the ax.

"Well, men," he said, "let's get started. We're already
late."

"Me and Homer ain't," Solon said. "We was here." This
time him and Homer didn't set on the cuts. They squatted
on their heels. Then I seen that Homer was whittling on a
stick. I hadn't noticed it before. "I make it two hours and a
little over," Solon said. "More or less."

Pap was still about half stooped over, holding the ax. "It's
nigher one," he said. "But call it two for the sake of the argu-
ment. What about it?"

"What argument?" Homer said.

"All right," pap said. "Two hours then. What about it?"

"Which is three man-hour units a hour, multiplied by two
hours," Solon said. "Or a total of six work units." When the
WPA first come to Yoknapatawpha County and started to
giving out jobs and grub and mattresses, Solon went in to
Jefferson to get on it. He would drive his school-bus truck
the twenty-two miles in to town every morning and come
back that night. He done that for almost a week before he
found out he would not only have to sign his farm off into
somebody else's name, he couldn't even own and run the
school bus that he had built himself. So he come back that
night and never went back no more, and since then hadn't
nobody better mention WPA to him unless they aimed to
fight, too, though every now and then he would turn up
with something all figured down into work units like he done
now. "Six units short."

30 The Country

"Four of which you and Homer could have already
worked out while you was setting here waiting on me," pap
said.

"Except that we didn't/' Solon said. "We promised Whit-
field two units of twelve three-unit hours toward getting
some new shingles on the church roof. We been here ever
since sunup, waiting for the third unit to show up, so we
could start. You don't seem to kept up with these modern
ideas about work that's been flooding and uplifting the coun-
try in the last few years."

"What modren ideas?" pap said. "I didn't know there was
but one idea about work — until it is done, it ain't done, and
when it is done, it is."

Homer made another long, steady whittle on the stick. His
knife was sharp as a razor.

Solon taken out his snuffbox and filled the top and tilted
the snuff into his lip and offered the box to Homer, and
Homer shaken his head, and Solon put the top back on the
box and put the box back into his pocket.

"So," pap said, "jest because I had to wait two hours for a
old seventy-year man to get back from fox hunting that
never had no more business setting out in the woods all night
than he would 'a' had setting all night in a highway juke
joint, we all three have got to come back here tomorrow to
finish them two hours that you and Homer "

"I ain't," Solon said. "I don't know about Homer. I prom-
ised Whitfield one day. I was here at sunup to start it. When
the sun goes down, I will consider I have done finished it."

"I see," pap said. "I see. It's me that's got to come back. By
myself. I got to break into a full morning to make up them
two hours that you and Homer spent resting. I got to spend
two hours of the next day making up for the two hours of the
day before that you and Homer never even worked."

"It's going to more than jest break into a morning," Solon

Shingles for the Lord 3 1

said. "It's going to wreck it. There's six units left over. Six
one-man-hour units. Maybe you can work twice as fast as
me and Homer put together and finish them in four hours,
but I don't believe you can work three times as fast and finish
in two."

Pap was standing up now. He was breathing hard. We
could hear him. "So," he said. "So." He swung the ax and
druv the blade into one of the cuts and snatched it up onto
its flat end, ready to split. "So I'm to be penalized a half a
day of my own time, from my own work that's waiting for
me at home right this minute, to do six hours more work than
the work you fellers lacked two hours of even doing atall,
purely and simply because I am jest a average hard-working
farmer trying to do the best he can, instead of a durn froe-
owning millionaire named Quick or Bookwright."

They went to work then, splitting the cuts into bolts and
riving the bolts into shingles for Tull and Snopes and the
others that had promised for tomorrow to start nailing onto
the church roof when they finished pulling the old shingles
off. They set flat on the ground in a kind of circle, with
their legs spraddled out on either side of the propped-up bolt,
Solon and Homer working light and easy and steady as two
clocks ticking, but pap making every lick of hisn like he was
killing a moccasin. If he had jest swung the maul half as fast
as he swung it hard, he would have rove as many shingles as
Solon and Homer together, swinging the maul up over his
head and holding it there for what looked like a whole min-
ute sometimes and then swinging it down onto the blade of
the froe, and not only a shingle flying off every lick but the
froe going on into the ground clean up to the helve eye, and
pap setting there wrenching at it slow and steady and hard,
like he jest wished it would try to hang on a root or a rock
and stay there.

"Here, here," Solon said. "If you don't watch out you

32 The Country

won't have nothing to do neither during them six extra units
tomorrow morning but rest."

Pap never even looked up. "Get out of the way," he said.
And Solon done it. If he hadn't moved the water bucket, pap
would have split it, too, right on top of the bolt, and this
time the whole shingle went whirling past Solon's shin jest
like a scythe blade.

"What you ought to do is to hire somebody to work out
them extra overtime units," Solon said.

"With what?" Pap said. "I ain't had no WPA experience
in dickering over labor. Get out of the way."

But Solon had already moved this time. Pap would have
had to change his whole position or else made this one curve.
So this one missed Solon, too, and pap set there wrenching
the froe, slow and hard and steady, back out of the ground.

"Maybe there's something else besides cash you might be
able to trade with," Solon said. "You might use that dog."

That was when pap actually stopped. I didn't know it my-
self then either, but I found it out a good long time before
Solon did. Pap set there with the maul up over his head and
the blade of the froe set against the block for the next lick,
looking up at Solon. "The dog?" he said.

It was a kind of mixed hound, with a little bird dog and
some collie and maybe a considerable of almost anything
else, but it would ease through the woods without no more
noise than a hant and pick up a squirrel's trail on the ground
and bark jest once, unless it knowed you was where you
could see it, and then tiptoe that trail out jest like a man and
never make another sound until it treed, and only then when
it knowed you hadn't kept in sight of it. It belonged to pap
and Vernon Tull together. Will Varner give it to Tull as a
puppy, and pap raised it for a half interest; me and him
trained it and it slept in my bed with me until it got so big
maw finally run it out of the house, and for the last six months

Shingles for the Lord 33

Solon had been trying to buy it. Him and Tull had agreed on
two dollars for Tull's half of it, but Solon and pap was still
six dollars apart on ourn, because pap said it was worth ten
dollars of anybody's money and if Tull wasn't going to col-
lect his full half of that, he was going to collect it for him.

"So that's it," pap said. "Them things wasn't work units
atall. They was dog units."

"Jest a suggestion," Solon said. "Jest a friendly offer to
keep them runaway shingles from breaking up your private
business for six hours tomorrow morning. You sell me your
half of that trick overgrown fyce and I'll finish these shingles
for you."

"Naturally including them six extra units of one dollars,"
pap said.

"No, no," Solon said. "I'll pay you the same two dollars
for your half of that dog that me and Tull agreed on for his
half of it. You meet me here tomorrow morning with the
dog and you can go on back home or wherever them urgent
private affairs are located, and forget about that church
roof."

For about ten seconds more, pap set there with the maul
up over his head, looking at Solon. Then for about three sec-
onds he wasn't looking at Solon or at nothing else. Then he
was looking at Solon again. It was jest exactly like after about
two and nine-tenths seconds he found out he wasn't looking
at Solon, so he looked back at him as quick as he could.
"Hah," he said. Then he began to laugh. It was laughing all
right, because his mouth was open and that's what it sounded
like. But it never went no further back than his teeth and it
never come nowhere near reaching as high up as his eyes.
And he never said "Look out" this time neither. He jest
shifted fast on his hips and swung the maul down, the froe
done already druv through the bolt and into the ground

34 The Country

while the shingle was still whirling off to slap Solon across
the shki.

Then they went back at it again. Up to this time I could
tell pap's licks from Solon's and Homer's, even with my back
turned, not because they was louder or steadier, because
Solon and Homer worked steady, too, and the froe never
made no especial noise jest going into the ground, but because
they was so infrequent; you would hear five or six of Solon's
and Homer's little polite chipping licks before you would
hear pap's froe go "chug!" and know that another shingle
had went whirling off somewhere. But from now on pap's
sounded jest as light and quick and polite as Solon's or
Homer's either, and, if anything, even a little faster, with the
shingles piling up steadier than I could stack them, almost;
until now there was going to be more than a plenty of them
for Tull and the others to shingle with tomorrow, right on
up to noon, when we heard Armstid's farm bell, and Solon
laid his froe and maul down and looked at his watch too. And
I wasn't so far away neither, but by the time I caught up with
pap he had untied the mule from the sapling and was already
on it. And maybe Solon and Homer thought they had pap,
and maybe for a minute I did, too, but I jest wish they could
have seen his face then. He reached our dinner bucket down
from the limb and handed it to me.

"Go on and eat," he said. "Don't wait for me. Him and
his work units. If he wants to know where I went, tell him
I forgot something and went home to get it. Tell him I had
to go back home to get two spoons for us to eat our dinner
with. No, don't tell him that. If he hears I went somewhere
to get something I needed to use, even if it's jest a tool to eat
with, he will refuse to believe I jest went home, for the reason
that I don't own anything there that even I would borrow."
He hauled the mule around and heeled him in the flank.
Then he pulled up again. "And when I come back, no matter

Shingles for the Lord 35

what I say, don't pay no attention to it. No matter what hap-
pens, don't you say nothing. Don't open your mouth a-tall,
you hear?"

Then he went on, and I went back to where Solon and
Homer was setting on the running board of Solon's school-
bus truck, eating, and sho enough Solon said jest exactly
what pap said he was going to.

"I admire his optimism, but he's mistaken. If it's something
he needs that he can't use his natural hands and feet for, he's
going somewhere else than jest his own house."

We had jest went back to the shingles when pap rid up
and got down and tied the mule back to the sapling and come
and taken up the ax and snicked the blade into the next cut.

"Well, men," he said, "I been thinking about it. I still don't
think it's right, but I still ain't thought of anything to do
about it. But somebody's got to make up for them two hours
nobody worked this morning, and since you fellers are two
to one against me, it looks like it's going to be me that makes
them up. But I got work waiting at home for me tomorrow.
I got corn that's crying out loud for me right now. Or maybe
that's jest a lie too. Maybe the whole thing is, I don't mind
admitting here in private that I been outfigured, but I be dog
if I'm going to set here by myself tomorrow morning admit-
ting it in public. Anyway, I ain't. So I'm going to trade with
you, Solon. You can have the dog."

Solon looked at pap. "I don't know as I want to trade
now," he said.

"I see," pap said. The ax was still stuck in the cut. He
began to pump it up and down to back it out.

"Wait," Solon said. "Put that durn ax down." But pap
held the ax raised for the lick, looking at Solon and waiting.
"You're swapping me half a dog for a half a day's work,"
Solon said

36 The Country

"Your half of the dog for that half a day's work you still
owe on these shingles."

uAnd the two dollars/' pap said. "That you and Tull
agreed on. I sell you half the dog for two dollars, and you
come back here tomorrow and finish the shingles. You give
me the two dollars now, and I'll meet you here in the morn-
ing with the dog, and you can show me the receipt from Tull
for his half then."

"Me and Tull have already agreed," Solon said.

"All right," pap said. "Then you can pay Tull his two
dollars and bring his receipt with you without no trouble."

"Tull will be at the church tomorrow morning, pulling
off them old shingles," Solon said.

"All right," pap said. "Then it won't be no trouble at all
for you to get a receipt from him. You can stop at the church
when you pass. Tull ain't named Grier. He won't need to be
off somewhere borrowing a crowbar."

So Solon taken out his purse and paid pap the two dollars
and they went back to work. And now it looked like they
really was trying to finish that afternoon, not jest Solon, but
even Homer, that didn't seem to be concerned in it nohow,
and pap, that had already swapped a half a dog to get rid of
whatever work Solon claimed would be left over. I quit try-
ing to stay up with them; I jest stacked shingles.

Then Solon laid his froe and maul down. "Well, men," he
said, "I don't know what you fellers think, but I consider
this a day."

"All right," pap said. "You are the one to decide when to
quit, since whatever elbow units you consider are going to be
shy tomorrow will be yourn."

"That's a fact," Solon said. "And since I am giving a day
and a half to the church instead of jest a day, like I started
out doing, I reckon I better get on home and tend to a little
of my own work." He picked up his froe and maul and ax,

Shingles for the Lord 37

and went to his truck and stood waiting for Homer to come
and get in.

'Til be here in the morning with the dog," pap said.

"Sholy," Solon said. It sounded like he had forgot about
the dog, or that it wasn't no longer any importance. But he
stood there again and looked hard and quiet at pap for about
a second. "And a bill of sale from Tull for his half of it. As
you say, it won't be no trouble a-tall to get that from him."
Him and Homer got into the truck and he started the engine.
You couldn't say jest what it was. It was almost like Solon
was hurrying himself, so pap wouldn't have to make any ex-
cuse or pretense toward doing or not doing anything. "I
have always understood the fact that lightning don't have to
hit twice is one of the reasons why they named it lightning.
So getting lightning-struck is a mistake that might happen to
any man. The mistake I seem to made is, I never realized in
time that what I was looking at was a cloud. I'll see you in
the morning."

"With the dog," pap said.

"Certainly," Solon said, again like it had slipped his mind
completely. "With the dog."

Then him and Homer drove off. Then pap got up.

"What?" I said. "What? You swapped him your half of
Tull's dog for that half a day's work tomorrow. Now what?"

"Yes," pap said. "Only before that I had already swapped
Tull a half a day's work pulling off them old shingles tomor-
row, for Tull's half of that dog. Only we ain't going to wait
until tomorrow. We're going to pull them shingles off to-
night, and without no more racket about it than is necessary.
I don't aim to have nothing on my mind tomorrow but
watching Mr. Solon Work-Unit Quick trying to get a bill
of sale for two dollars or ten dollars either on the other half
of that dog. And we'll do it tonight. I don't want him jest to
find out at sunup tomorrow that he is too late. I want him to

38 The Country

find out then that even when he laid down to sleep he was
already too late."

So we went back home and I fed and milked while pap
went down to Killegrews' to carry the froe and maul back
and to borrow a crowbar. But of all places in the world and
doing what under the sun with it, Old Man Killegrew had
went and lost his crowbar out of a boat into forty feet of
water. And pap said how he come within a inch of going to
Solon's and borrowing his crowbar out of pure poetic jus-
tice, only Solon might have smelled the rat jest from the idea
of the crowbar. So pap went to Armstid's and borrowed hisn
and come back and we et supper and cleaned and filled the
lantern while maw still tried to find out what we was up to
that couldn't wait till morning.

We left her still talking, even as far as the front gate, and
come on back to the church, walking this time, with the rope
and crowbar and a hammer for me, and the lantern still dark.
Whitfield and Snopes was unloading a ladder from Snopes'
wagon when we passed the church on the way home before
dark, so all we had to do was to set the ladder up against the
church. Then pap clumb up onto the roof with the lantern
and pulled off shingles until he could hang the lantern inside
behind the decking, where it could shine out through the
cracks in the planks, but you couldn't see it unless you was
passing in the road, and by that time anybody would 'a' al-
ready heard us. Then I clumb up with the rope, and pap
reached it through the decking and around a rafter and back
and tied the ends around our waists, and we started. And we
went at it. We had them old shingles jest raining down, me
using the claw hammer and pap using the crowbar, working
the bar under a whole patch of shingles at one time and then
laying back on the bar like in one more lick or if the crowbar
ever happened for one second to get a solid holt, he would
tilt up that whole roof at one time like a hinged box lid.

Shingles f0r the Lord 39

That's exactly what he finally done. He laid back on the
bar and this time it got a holt. It wasn't jest a patch of shin-
gles, it was a whole section of decking, so that when he
lunged back he snatched that whole section of roof from
around the lantern like you would shuck a corn nubbin. The
lantern was hanging on a nail. He never even moved the nail,
he jest pulled the board off of it, so that it looked like for a
whole minute I watched the lantern, and the crowbar, too,
setting there in the empty air in a little mess of floating shin-
gles, with the empty nail still sticking through the bail of the
lantern, before the whole thing started down into the church.
It hit the floor and bounced once. Then it hit the floor again,
and this time the whole church jest blowed up into a pit of
yellow jumping fire, with me and pap hanging over the edge
of it on two ropes.

I don't know what become of the rope nor how we got
out of it. I don't remember climbing down. Jest pap yelling
behind me and pushing me about halfway down the ladder
and then throwing me the rest of the way by a handful of my
overhalls, and then we was both on the ground, running for
the water barrel. It set under the gutter spout at the side, and
Armstid was there then; he had happened to go out to his lot
about a hour back and seen the lantern on the church roof,
and it stayed on his mind until finally he come up to see
what was going on, and got there jest in time to stand yelling
back and forth with pap across the water barrel. And I be-
lieve we still would have put it out. Pap turned and squatted
against the barrel and got a holt of it over his shoulder and
stood up with that barrel that was almost full and run around
the corner and up the steps of the church and hooked his
toe on the top step and come down with the barrel busting
on top of him and knocking him cold out as a wedge.

So we had to drag him back first, and maw was there then,
and Mrs. Armstid about the same time, and me and Armstid

40 The Country

run with the two fire buckets to the spring, and when we got
back there was a plenty there, Whitfield, too, with more
buckets, and we done what we could, but the spring was two
hundred yards away and ten buckets emptied it and it taken
five minutes to fill again, and so finally we all jest stood
around where pap had come to again with a big cut on his
head and watched it go. It was a old church, long dried out,
and full of old colored-picture charts that Whitfield had ac-
cumulated for more than fifty years, that the lantern had lit
right in the middle of when it finally exploded. There was a
special nail where he would keep a old long nightshirt he
would wear to baptize in. I would use to watch it all the time
during church and Sunday school, and me and the other boys
would go past the church sometimes jest to peep in at it,
because to a boy of ten it wasn't jest a cloth garment or even
a iron armor; it was the old strong Archangel Michael his
self, that had fit and strove and conquered sin for so long
that it finally had the same contempt for the human beings
that returned always to sin as hogs and dogs done that the old
strong archangel his self must have had.

For a long time it never burned, even after everything else
inside had. We could watch it, hanging there among the fire,
not like it had knowed in its time too much water to burn
easy, but like it had strove and fit with the devil and all the
hosts of hell too long to burn in jest a fire that Res Griet
started, trying to beat Solon Quick out of half a dog. But at
last it went, too, not in a hurry still, but jest all at once, kind
of roaring right on up and out against the stars and the far
dark spaces. And then there wasn't nothing but jest pap,
drenched and groggy-looking, on the ground, with the rest
of us around him, and Whitfield like always in his boiled shirt
and his black hat and pants, standing there with his hat on,
too, like he had strove too long to save what hadn't ought to
been created in the first place, from the damnation it didn't

Shingles for the Lord 41

even want to escape, to bother to need to take his hat off in
any presence. He looked around at us from under it; we was
all there now, all that belonged to that church and used it to
be born and marry and die from — us and the Armstids and
Tulls, and Bookwright and Quick and Snopes.

"I was wrong," Whitfield said. "I told you we would meet
here tomorrow to roof a church. We'll meet here in the
morning to raise one."

"Of course we got to have a church," pap said. "We're
going to have one. And we're going to have it soon. But
there's some of us done already give a day or so this week,
at the cost of our own work. Which is right and just, and
we're going to give more, and glad to. But I don't believe
that the Lord "

Whitfield let him finish. He never moved. He jest stood
there until pap finally run down of his own accord and
hushed and set there on the ground mostly not looking at
maw, before Whitfield opened his mouth.

"Not you," Whitfield said. "Arsonist."

"Arsonist?" pap said.

"Yes," Whitfield said. "If there is any pursuit in which
you can engage without carrying flood and fire and destruc-
tion and death behind you, do it. But not one hand shall you
lay to this new house until you have proved to us that you
are to be trusted again with the powers and capacities of a
man." He looked about at us again. "Tull and Snopes and
Armstid have already promised for tomorrow. I understand
that Quick had another half day he intended "

"I can give another day," Solon said.

"I can give the rest of the week," Homer said.

"I ain't rushed neither," Snopes said.

"That will be enough to start with, then," Whitfield said.
"It's late now. Let us all go home."

He went first. He didn't look back once, at the church or

42 The Country

at us. He went to the old mare and clumb up slow and stiff
and powerful, and was gone, and we went too, scattering.
But I looked back at it. It was jest a shell now, with a red
and fading core, and I had hated it at times and feared it at
others, and I should have been glad. But there was something
that even that fire hadn't even touched. Maybe that's all it
was — jest indestructibility, endurability — that old man that
could plan to build it back while its walls was still fire-fierce
and then calmly turn his back and go away because he
knowed that the men that never had nothing to give toward
the new one but their work would be there at sunup tomor-
row, and the day after that, and the day after that, too, as
long as it was needed, to give that work to build it back
again. So it hadn't gone a-tall; it didn't no more care for that
little fire and flood than Whitfield's old baptizing gown had
done. Then we was home. Maw had left so fast the lamp was
still lit, and we could see pap now, still leaving a puddle
where he stood, with a cut across the back of his head where
the barrel had busted and the blood-streaked water soaking
him to the waist.

"Get them wet clothes off," maw said.

"I don't know as I will or not," pap said. "I been publicly
notified that I ain't fitten to associate with white folks, so 1
publicly notify them same white folks and Methodists, too,
not to try to associate with me, or the devil can have the
hindmost."

But maw hadn't even listened. When she come back with a
pan of water and a towel and the liniment bottle, pap was
already in his nightshirt.

"I don't want none of that neither," he said. "If my head
wasn't worth busting, it ain't worth patching." But she never
paid no mind to that neither. She washed his head off and
dried it and put the bandage on and went out again, and pap
went and got into bed.

Shingles for the Lord 43:

"Hand me my snuff; then you get out of here and stay out
too/' he said.

But before I could do that maw come back. She had a glass
of hot toddy, and she went to the bed and stood there with
it, and pap turned his head and looked at it.

"What's that?" he said.

But maw never answered, and then he set up in bed and
drawed a long, shuddering breath — we could hear it — and
after a minute he put out his hand for the toddy and set there
holding it and drawing his breath, and then he taken a sip
of it.

"I Godfrey, if him and all of them put together think they
can keep me from working on my own church like ary other
man, he better be a good man to try it." He taken another
sip of the toddy. Then he taken a long one. "Arsonist," he
said. "Work units. Dog units. And now arsonist. I Godfrey,,
what a day!"

The Tall Men

THEY PASSED THE DARK bulk of the cotton gin. Then they
saw the lamplit house and the other car, the doctor's coupe,
just stopping at the gate, and they could hear the hound
baying.

"Here we are/' the old deputy marshal said.

"What's that other car?" the younger man said, the stran-
ger, the state draft investigator.

"Doctor Schofield's," the marshal said. "Lee McCallum
asked me to send him out when I telephoned we were com-
ing."

"You mean you warned them?" the investigator said.
"You telephoned ahead that I was coming out with a war-
rant for these two evaders? Is this how you carry out the
orders of the United States Government?"

The marshal was a lean, clean old man who chewed to-
bacco, who had been born and lived in the county all his life.

"I understood all you wanted was to arrest these two
McCallum boys and bring them back to town," he said.

"It was!" the investigator said. "And now you have
warned them, given them a chance to run. Possibly put the
Government to the expense of hunting them down with
troops. Have you forgotten that you are under a bond your-
self?"

"I ain't forgot it," the marshal said. "And ever since we

46 The Country

left Jefferson I been trying to tell you something for you
not to forget. But I reckon it will take these McCallums to
impress that on you. . . . Pull in behind the other car. We'll
try to find out first just how sick whoever it is that is sick

is."

The investigator drew up behind the other car and
switched off and blacked out his lights. "These people," he
said. Then he thought, But this doddering, tobacco-chewing
old man is one of them, too, despite the honor and pride of
his office, which should have made him different. So he
didn't speak it aloud, removing the keys and getting out of
the car, and then locking the car itself, rolling the windows
up first, thinking, These people who lie about and conceal
the ownership of land and property in order to hold relief
jobs which they have no intention of performing, standing
on their constitutional rights against having to work, who
jeopardize the very job itself through petty and transparent
subterfuge to acquire a free mattress which they intend to
attempt to sell; who would relinquish even the job, if by so
doing they could receive free food and a place, any rathole,
in town to sleep in; who, as farmers, make false statements
to get seed loans which they will later misuse, and then react
in loud vituperative outrage and astonishment when caught
at it. And then, when at long last a suffering and threatened
Government asks one thing of them in return, one thing
simply, which is to put their names down on a selective-
service list, they refuse to do it.

The old marshal had gone on. The investigator followed,
through a stout paintless gate in a picket fence, up a broad
brick walk between two rows of old shabby cedars, toward
the rambling and likewise paintless sprawl of the two-story
house in the open hall of which the soft lamplight glowed
and the lower story of which, as the investigator now per-
ceived, was of logs.

The Tall Men 47

He saw a hall full of soft lamplight beyond a stout paint-
less gallery running across the log front, from beneath which
the same dog which they had heard, a big hound, came
booming again, to stand foursquare facing them in the walk,
bellowing, until a man's voice spoke to it from the house.
He followed the marshal up the steps onto the gallery. Then
he saw the man standing in the door, waiting for them to
approach — a man of about forty-five, not tall, but blocky,
with a brown, still face and horseman's hands, who looked
at him once, brief and hard, and then no more, speaking to
the marshal, "Howdy, Mr. Gombault. Come in."

"Howdy, Rafe," the marshal said. "Who's sick?"

"Buddy," the other said. "Slipped and caught his leg in
the hammer mill this afternoon."

"Is it bad?" the marshal said.

"It looks bad to me," the other said. "That's why we sent
for the doctor instead of bringing him in to town. We
couldn't get the bleeding stopped."

"I'm sorry to hear that," the marshal said. "This is Mr.
Pearson." Once more the investigator found the other look-
ing at him, the brown eyes still, courteous enough in the
brown face, the hand he offered hard enough, but the clasp
quite limp, quite cold. The marshal was still speaking. "From
Jackson. From the draft board." Then he said, and the in-
vestigator could discern no change whatever in his tone:
"He's got a warrant for the boys."

The investigator could discern no change whatever any-
where. The limp hard hand merely withdrew from his, the
still face now looking at the marshal. "You mean we have
declared war?"

"No," the marshal said.

"That's not the question, Mr. McCallum," the investi-
gator said. "All required of them was to register. Their num-
bers might not even be drawn this time; under the law of

48 The Country

averages, they probably would not be. But they refused —
failed, anyway — to register."

"I see," the other said. He was not looking at the investi-
gator. The investigator couldn't tell certainly if he was even
looking at the marshal, although he spoke to him, "You
want to see Buddy? The doctor's with him now."

"Wait," the investigator said. "I'm sorry about your

brother's accident, but I " The marshal glanced back

at him for a moment, his shaggy gray brows beetling, with
something at once courteous yet a little impatient about the
glance, so that during the instant the investigator sensed
from the old marshal the same quality which had been in
the other's brief look. The investigator was a man of better
than average intelligence; he was already becoming aware
of something a little different here from what he had ex-
pected. But he had been in relief work in the state several
years, dealing almost exclusively with country people, so he
still believed he knew them. So he looked at the old marshal,
thinking, Yes. The same sort of people, despite the office,
the authority and responsibility ivhich should have changed
him. Thinking again, These people. These people. "I in-
tend to take the night train back to Jackson," he said. "My
reservation is already made. Serve the warrant and we
will "

"Come along," the old marshal said. "We are going to
have plenty of time."

So he followed — there was nothing else to do — fuming
and seething, attempting in the short length of the hall to
regain control of himself in order to control the situation,
because he realized now that if the situation were controlled,
it would devolve upon him to control it; that if their de-
parture with their prisoners were expedited, it must be him-
self and not the old marshal who would expedite it. He had
been right. The doddering old officer was not only at bot-

The Tall Men 49

torn one of these people, he had apparently been corrupted
anew to his old, inherent, shiftless sloth and unreliability
merely by entering the house. So he followed in turn, down
the hall and into a bedroom; whereupon he looked about
him not only with amazement but with something very like
terror. The room was a big room, with a bare unpainted
floor, and besides the bed, it contained only a chair or two
and one other piece of old-fashioned furniture. Yet to the
investigator it seemed so filled with tremendous men cast
in the same mold as the man who had met them that the
very walls themselves must bulge. Yet they were not big,
not tall, and it was not vitality, exuberance, because they
made no sound, merely looking quietly at him where he
stood in the door, with faces bearing an almost identical
stamp of kinship — a thin, almost frail old man of about
seventy, slightly taller than the others; a second one, white-
haired, too, but otherwise identical with the man who had
met them at the door; a third one about the same age as
the man who had met them, but with something delicate in
his face and something tragic and dark and wild in the same
dark eyes; the two absolutely identical blue-eyed youths;
and lastly the blue-eyed man on the bed over which the
doctor, who might have been any city doctor, in his neat
city suit, leaned — all of them turning to look quietly at him
and the marshal as they entered. And he saw, past the doctor,
the slit trousers of the man on the bed and the exposed,
bloody, mangled leg, and he turned sick, stopping just in-
side the door under that quiet, steady regard while the
marshal went up to the man who lay on the bed, smoking
a cob pipe, a big, old-fashioned, wicker-covered demijohn,
such as the investigator's grandfather had kept his whisky
in, on the table beside him.

"Well, Buddy," the marshal said, "this is bad."

"Ah, it was my own damn fault," the man on the bed

50 The Country

said. "Stuart kept warning me about that frame I was using."

"That's correct," the second old one said.

Still the others said nothing. They just looked steadily and
quietly at the investigator until the marshal turned slightly
and said, "This is Mr. Pearson. From Jackson. He's got a
warrant for the boys."

Then the man on the bed said, "What for?"

"That draft business, Buddy," the marshal said.

"We're not at war now," the man on the bed said.

"No," the marshal said. "It's that new law. They didn't
register."

"What are you going to do with them?"

"It's a warrant, Buddy. Swore out."

"That means jail."

"It's a warrant," the old marshal said. Then the investi-
gator saw that the man on the bed was watching him, puff-
ing steadily at the pipe.

"Pour me some whisky, Jackson," he said.

"No," the doctor said. "He's had too much already."

"Pour me some whisky, Jackson," the man on the bed
said. He puffed steadily at the pipe, looking at the investi-
gator. "You come from the Government?" he said.

"Yes," the investigator said. "They should have registered.

That's all required of them yet. They did not " His

voice ceased, while the seven pairs of eyes contemplated him,
and the man on the bed puffed steadily.

"We would have still been here," the man on the bed
said. "We wasn't going to run." He turned his head. The
two youths were standing side by side at the foot of the bed.
"Anse, Lucius," he said.

To the investigator it sounded as if they answered as one,
"Yes, father."

"This gentleman has come all the way from Jackson to

The Tall Men 51

say the Government is ready for you. I reckon the quickest
place to enlist will be Memphis. Go upstairs and pack."

The investigator started, moved forward. "Wait!" he
cried.

But Jackson, the eldest, had forestalled him. He said,
"Wait," also, and now they were not looking at the investi-
gator. They were looking at the doctor.

"What about his leg?" Jackson said.

"Look at it," the doctor said. "He almost amputated it
himself. It won't wait. And he can't be moved now. I'll
need my nurse to help me, and some ether, provided he
hasn't had too much whisky to stand the anesthetic too.
One of you can drive to town in my car. I'll telephone "

"Ether?" the man on the bed said. "What for? You just
said yourself it's pretty near off now. I could whet up one
of Jackson's butcher knives and finish it myself, with another
drink or two. Go on. Finish it."

"You couldn't stand any more shock," the doctor said.
"This is whisky talking now."

"Shucks," the other said. "One day in France we was
running through a wheat field and I saw the machine gun,
coming across the wheat, and I tried to jump it like you
would jump a fence rail somebody was swinging at your
middle, only I never made it. And I was on the ground then,
and along toward dark that begun to hurt, only about that
time something went whang on the back of my helmet, like
when you hit a anvil, so I never knowed nothing else until
I woke up. There was a heap of us racked up along a bank
outside a field dressing station, only it took a long time for
the doctor to get around to all of us, and by that time it
was hurting bad. This here ain't hurt none to speak of since
I got a-holt of this johnny-jug. You go on and finish it. If
it's help you need, Stuart and Rafe will help you. . . . Pour
me a drink, Jackson."

52 The Country

This time the doctor raised the demijohn and examined
the level of the liquor. "There's a good quart gone," he said.
"If you've drunk a quart of whisky since four o'clock, I
doubt if you could stand the anesthetic. Do you think you
could stand it if I finished it now?"

"Yes, finish it. I've ruined it; I want to get shut of it."

The doctor looked about at the others, at the still, identical
faces watching him. "If I had him in town, in the hospital,
with a nurse to watch him, I'd probably wait until he got
over this first shock and got the whisky out of his system.
But he can't be moved now, and I can't stop the bleeding
like this, and even if I had ether or a local anesthetic "

"Shucks," the man on the bed said. "God never made no
better local nor general comfort or anesthetic neither than
what's in this johnny-jug. And this ain't Jackson's leg nor
Stuart's nor Rafe's nor Lee's. It's mine. I done started it; I
reckon I can finish cutting it off any way I want to."

But the doctor was still looking at Jackson. "Well, Mr.
McCallum?" he said. "You're the oldest."

But it was Stuart who answered. "Yes," he said. "Finish
it. What do you want? Hot water, I reckon."

"Yes," the doctor said. "Some clean sheets. Have you got
a big table you can move in here?"

"The kitchen table," the man who had met them at the
door said. "Me and the boys "

"Wait," the man on the bed said. "The boys won't have
time to help you." He looked at them again. "Anse, Lucius,"
he said.

Again it seemed to the investigator that they answered as
one, "Yes, father."

"This gentleman yonder is beginning to look impatient.
You better start. Come to think of it, you won't need to
pack. You will have uniforms in a day or two. Take the
truck. There won't be nobody to drive you to Memphis and

The Tall Men 53

bring the truck back, so you can leave it at the Gayoso
Feed Company until we can send for it. I'd like for you to
enlist into the old Sixth Infantry, where I used to be. But I
reckon that's too much to hope, and you'll just have to
chance where they send you. But it likely won't matter,
once you are in. The Government done right by me in my
day, and it will do right by you. You just enlist wherever
they want to send you, need you, and obey your sergeants
and officers until you find out how to be soldiers. Obey
them, but remember your name and don't take nothing from
no man. You can go now."

"Wait!" the investigator cried again; again he started,
moved forward into the center of the room. "I protest this!
I'm sorry about Mr. McCallum's accident. I'm sorry about
the whole business. But it's out of my hands and out of his
hands now. This charge, failure to register according to law,
has been made and the warrant issued. It cannot be evaded
this way. The course of the action must be completed before
any other step can be taken. They should have thought of
this when these boys failed to register. If Mr. Gombault
refuses to serve this warrant, I will serve it myself and take
these men back to Jefferson with me to answer this charge
as made. And I must warn Mr. Gombault that he will be
cited for contempt!"

The old marshal turned, his shaggy eyebrows beetling
again, speaking down to the investigator as if he were a
child, "Ain't you found out yet that me or you neither ain't
going nowhere for a while?"

"What?" the investigator cried. He looked about at the
grave faces once more contemplating him with that remote
and speculative regard. "Am I being threatened?" he cried.

"Ain't anybody paying any attention to you at all," the
marshal said. "Now you just be quiet for a while, and you
will be all right, and after a while we can go back to town."

54 The Country

So he stopped again and stood while the grave, contem-
plative faces freed him once more of that impersonal and
unbearable regard, and saw the two youths approach the
bed and bend down in turn and kiss their father on the
mouth, and then turn as one and leave the room, passing
him without even looking at him. And sitting in the lamplit
hall beside the old marshal, the bedroom door closed now,
he heard the truck start up and back and turn and go down
the road, the sound of it dying away, ceasing, leaving the
Still, hot night — the Mississippi Indian summer, which had
already outlasted half of November — filled with the loud
last shrilling of the summer's cicadas, as though they, too,
were aware of the imminent season of cold weather and of
death.

"I remember old Anse," the marshal said pleasantly, chat-
tily, in that tone in which an adult addresses a strange child.
"He's been dead fifteen-sixteen years now. He was about
sixteen when the old war broke out, and he walked all the
way to Virginia to get into it. He could have enlisted and
fought right here at home, but his ma was a Carter, so
wouldn't nothing do him but to go all the way back to
Virginia to do his fighting, even though he hadn't never seen
Virginia before himself; walked all the way back to a land
he hadn't never even seen before and enlisted in Stonewall
Jackson's army and stayed in it all through the Valley, and
right up to Chancellorsville, where them Carolina boys shot
Jackson by mistake, and right on up to that morning in
'Sixty-five when Sheridan's cavalry blocked the road from
Appomattox to the Valley, where they might have got away
again. And he walked back to Mississippi with just about
what he had carried away with him when he left, and he
got married and built the first story of this house — this here
log story we're in right now — and started getting them boys
• — Jackson and Stuart and Raphael and Lee and Buddy.

The Tall Men 55

"Buddy come along late, late enough to be in the other
war, in France in it. You heard him in there. He brought
back two medals, an American medal and a French one, and
no man knows till yet how he got them, just what he done.
I don't believe he even told Jackson and Stuart and them.
He hadn't hardly got back home, with them numbers on
his uniform and the wound stripes and them two medals,
before he had found him a girl, found her right off, and a year
later them twin boys was born, the livin', spittin' image of
old Anse McCallum. If old Anse had just been about seventy-
five years younger, the three of them might have been
thriblets. I remember them — two little critters exactly alike,
and wild as spikehorn bucks, running around here day and
night both with a pack of coon dogs until they got big
enough to help Buddy and Stuart and Lee with the farm
and the gin, and Rafe with the horses and mules, when he
would breed and raise and train them and take them to
Memphis to sell, right on up to three, four years back, when
they went to the agricultural college for a year to learn
more about whiteface cattle.

"That was after Buddy and them had quit raising cotton.
I remember that too. It was when the Government first
begun to interfere with how a man farmed his own land,
raised his cotton. Stabilizing the price, using up the surplus,
they called it, giving a man advice and help, whether he
wanted it or not. You may have noticed them boys in yon-
der tonight; curious folks almost, you might call them. That
first year, when county agents was trying to explain the
new system to farmers, the agent come out here and tried
to explain it to Buddy and Lee and Stuart, explaining how
they would cut down the crop, but that the Government
would pay farmers the difference, and so they would ac-
tually be better off than trying to farm by themselves.

" 'Why, we're much obliged,' Buddy says. 'But we don't

56 The Country

need no help. We'll just make the cotton like we always
done; if we can't make a crop of it, that will just be our look-
out and our loss, and we'll try again.'

"So they wouldn't sign no papers nor no cards nor noth-
ing. They just went on and made the cotton like old Anse
had taught them to; it was like they just couldn't believe
that the Government aimed to help a man whether he
wanted help or not, aimed to interfere with how much of
anything he could make by hard work on his own land,
making the crop and ginning it right here in their own gin,
like they had always done, and hauling it to town to sell,
hauling it all the way into Jefferson before they found out
they couldn't sell it because, in the first place, they had
made too much of it and, in the second place, they never
had no card to sell what they would have been allowed. So
they hauled it back. The gin wouldn't hold all of it, so they
put some of it under Raf e's mule shed and they put the rest
of it right here in the hall where we are setting now, where
they would have to walk around it all winter and keep them-
selves reminded to be sho and fill out that card next time.

"Only next year they didn't fill out no papers neither. It
was like they still couldn't believe it, still believed in the
freedom and liberty to make or break according to a man's
fitness and will to work, guaranteed by the Government
that old Anse had tried to tear in two once and failed, and
admitted in good faith he had failed and taken the conse-
quences, and that had give Buddy a medal and taken care
of him when he was far away from home in a strange land
and hurt.

"So they made that second crop. And they couldn't sell it
to nobody neither because they never had no cards. This
time they built a special shed to put it under, and I remember
how in that second winter Buddy come to town one day to
see Lawyer Gavin Stevens. Not for legal advice how to sue

The Tall Men 57

the Government or somebody into buying the cotton, even
if they never had no card for it, but just to find out why. 'I
was for going ahead and signing up for it,' Buddy says. 'If
that's going to be the new rule. But we talked it over, and
Jackson ain't no farmer, but he knowed father longer than
the rest of us, and he said father would have said no, and I
reckon now he would have been right.'

"So they didn't raise any more cotton; they had a plenty
of it to last a while — twenty-two bales, I think it was. That
was when they went into whitef ace cattle, putting old Anse's
cotton land into pasture, because that's what he would have
wanted them to do if the only way they could raise cotton
was by the Government telling them how much they could
raise and how much they could sell it for, and where, and
when, and then pay them for not doing the work they didn't
do. Only even when they didn't raise cotton, every year the
county agent's young fellow would come out to measure
the pasture crops they planted so he could pay them for that,
even if they never had no not-cotton to be paid for. Except
that he never measured no crop on this place. i You're wel-
come to look at what we are doing,' Buddy says. 'But don't
draw it down on your map.'

" 'But you can get money for this,' the young fellow says.
'The Government wants to pay you for planting all this.'

" 'We are aiming to get money for it,' Buddy says. 'When
we can't, we will try something else. But not from the Gov-
ernment. Give that to them that want to take it. We can
make out.'

"And that's about all. Them twenty-two bales of orphan
cotton are down yonder in the gin right now, because
there's room for it in the gin now because they ain't using
the gin no more. And them boys grew up and went off a year
to the agricultural college to learn right about whiteface
cattle, and then come back to the rest of them — these here

58 The Country

curious folks living off here to themselves, with the rest of
the world all full of pretty neon lights burning night and
day both, and easy, quick money scattering itself around
everywhere for any man to grab a little, and every man with
a shiny new automobile already wore out and throwed away
and the new one delivered before the first one was even paid
for, and everywhere a fine loud grabble and snatch of AAA
and WPA and a dozen other three-letter reasons for a man
not to work. Then this here draft comes along, and these
curious folks ain't got around to signing that neither, and
you come all the way up from Jackson with your paper all
signed and regular, and we come out here, and after a while
we can go back to town. A man gets around, don't he?"

"Yes," the investigator said. "Do you suppose we can go
back to town now?"

"No," the marshal told him in that same kindly tone, "not
just yet. But we can leave after a while. Of course you will
miss your train. But there will be another one tomorrow."

He rose, though the investigator had heard nothing. The
investigator watched him go down the hall and open the bed-
room door and enter and close it behind him. The investiga-
tor sat quietly, listening to the night sounds and looking at
the closed door until it opened presently and the marshal
came back, carrying something in a bloody sheet, carrying it
gingerly.

"Here," he said. "Hold it a mihute."

"It's bloody," the investigator said.

"That's all right," the marshal said. "We can wash when
we get through." So the investigator took the bundle and
stood holding it while he watched the old marshal go back
down the hall and on through it and vanish and return pres-
ently with a lighted lantern and a shovel. "Come along," he
said. "We're pretty near through now."

The investigator followed him out of the house and across

The Tall Men 59

the yard, carrying gingerly the bloody, shattered, heavy
bundle in which it still seemed to him he could feel some
warmth of life, the marshal striding on ahead, the lantern
swinging against his leg, the shadow of his striding scissoring
and enormous along the earth, his voice still coming back
over his shoulder, chatty and cheerful, "Yes, sir. A man gets
around and he sees a heap; a heap of folks in a heap of situa-
tions. The trouble is, we done got into the habit of confus-
ing the situations with the folks. Take yourself, now," he
said in that same kindly tone, chatty and easy; "you mean
all right. You just went and got yourself all fogged up with
rules and regulations. That's our trouble. We done invented
ourselves so many alphabets and rules and recipes that we
can't see anything else; if what we see can't be fitted to an
alphabet or a rule, we are lost. We have come to be like
critters doctor folks might have created in laboratories, that
have learned how to slip off their bones and guts and still
live, still be kept alive indefinite and forever maybe even
without even knowing the bones and the guts are gone. We
have slipped our backbone; we have about decided a man
don't need a backbone any more; to have one is old-fashioned.
But the groove where the backbone used to be is still there,
and the backbone has been kept alive, too, and someday
we're going to slip back onto it. I don't know just when nor
just how much of a wrench it will take to teach us, but
someday."

They had left the yard now. They were mounting a slope;
ahead of them the investigator could see another clump of
cedars, a small clump, somehow shaggily formal against the
starred sky. The marshal entered it and stopped and set the
lantern down and, following with the bundle, the investiga-
tor saw a small rectangle of earth enclosed by a low brick
coping. Then he saw the two graves, or the headstones —
two plain granite slabs set upright in the earth.

60 The Country

"Old Anse and Mrs. Anse," the marshal said. "Buddy's
wife wanted to be buried with her folks. I reckon she would
have been right lonesome up here with just McCallums. Now,
let's see." He stood for a moment, his chin in his hand; to the
investigator he looked exactly like an old lady trying to de-
cide where to set out a shrub. "They was to run from left to
right, beginning with Jackson. But after the boys was born^
Jackson and Stuart was to come up here by their pa and mat
so Buddy could move up some and make room. So he will be
about here." He moved the lantern nearer and took up the
shovel. Then he saw the investigator still holding the bundle.
"Set it down," he said. "I got to dig first."

"I'll hold it," the investigator said.

"Nonsense, put it down." the marshal said. "Buddy won't
mind."

So the investigator put the bundle down on the brick cop-
ing and the marshal began to dig, skillfully and rapidly, still
talking in that cheerful, interminable voice, "Yes, sir. We
done forgot about folks. Life has done got cheap, and life
ain't cheap. Life's a pretty durn valuable thing. I don't mean
just getting along from one WPA relief check to the next
one, but honor and pride and discipline that make a man
worth preserving, make him of any value. That's what we
got to learn again. Maybe it takes trouble, bad trouble, to
teach it back to us; maybe it was the walking to Virginia
because that's where his ma come from, and losing a war and
then walking back, that taught it to old Anse. Anyway, he
seems to learned it, and to learned it good enough to bequeath
it to his boys. Did you notice how all Buddy had to do was
to tell them boys of his it was time to go, because the Gov-
ernment had sent them word? And how they told him
good-by? Crowned men kissing one another without hiding
and without shame. Maybe that's what I am trying to say.
, . . There." he said. "That's big enough."

The Tall Men 61

He moved quickly, easily; before the investigator could
stir, he had lifted the bundle into the narrow trench and was
covering it, covering it as rapidly as he had dug, smoothing
the earth over it with the shovel. Then he stood up and raised
the lantern — a tall, lean old man, breathing easily and lightly.

"I reckon we can go back to town now," he said.

A Bear Hunt

RATLIFF is TELLING THIS. He is a sewing-machine agent; time
was when he traveled about our county in a light, strong
buckboard drawn by a sturdy, wiry, mismatched team of
horses; now he uses a model T Ford, which also carries his
demonstrator machine in a tin box on the rear, shaped like a
dog kennel and painted to resemble a house.

Ratliff may be seen anywhere without surprise — the only
man present at the bazaars and sewing bees of farmers' wives;
moving among both men and women at all-day singings at
country churches, and singing, too, in a pleasant barytone.
He was even at this bear hunt of which he speaks, at the
annual hunting camp of Major de Spain in the river bottom
twenty miles from town, even though there was no one
there to whom he might possibly have sold a machine, since
Mrs. de Spain doubtless already owned one, unless she had
given it to one of her married daughters, and the other man —
the man called Lucius Provine — with whom he became in-
volved, to the violent detriment of his face and other mem-
bers, could not have bought one for his wife even if he
would, without Ratliff sold it to him on indefinite credit.

Provine is also a native of the county. But he is forty now
and most of his teeth are gone, and it is years now since he
and his dead brother and another dead and forgotten con-
temporary named Jack Bonds were known as the Provine

64 The Country

gang and terrorized our quiet town after the unimaginative
fashion of wild youth by letting off pistols on the square late
Saturday nights or galloping their horses down scurrying
and screaming lanes of churchgoing ladies on Sunday morn-
ing. Younger citizens of the town do not know him at all
save as a tall, apparently strong and healthy man who loafs
in a brooding, saturnine fashion wherever he will be allowed,
never exactly accepted by any group, and who makes no
effort whatever to support his wife and three children.

There are other men among us now whose families are in
want; men who, perhaps, would not work anyway, but who
now, since the last few years, cannot find work. These all
attain and hold to a certain respectability by acting as agents
for the manufacturers of minor articles like soap and men's
toilet accessories and kitchen objects, being seen constantly
about the square and the streets carrying small black sample
cases. One day, to our surprise, Provine also appeared with
such a case, though within less than a week the town officers
discovered that it contained whisky in pint bottles. Major
de Spain extricated him somehow, as it was Major de Spain
who supported his family by eking out the money which
Mrs. Provine earned by sewing and such — perhaps as a
Roman gesture of salute and farewell to the bright figure
which Provine had been before time whipped him.

For there are older men who remember the Butch — he has
even lost somewhere in his shabby past the lusty dare-devil-
try of the nickname — Provine of twenty years ago; that
youth without humor, yet with some driving, inarticulate
zest for breathing which has long since burned out of him,
who performed in a fine frenzy, which was, perhaps, mostly
alcohol, certain outrageous and spontaneous deeds, one of
which was the Negro-picnic business. The picnic was at a
Negro church a few miles from town. In the midst of it, the
two Provines and Jack Bonds, returning from a dance in the

A Bear Hunt 65

country, rode up with drawn pistols and freshly lit cigars;
and taking the Negro men one by one, held the burning cigar
ends to the popular celluloid collars of the day, leaving each
victim's neck ringed with an abrupt and faint and painless
ling of carbon. This is he of whom Ratliff is talking.

But there is one thing more which must be told here in
order to set the stage for Ratliff. Five miles farther down the
river from Major de Spain's camp, and in an even wilder part
of the river's jungle of cane and gum and pin oak, there is an
Indian mound. Aboriginal, it rises profoundly and darkly
enigmatic, the only elevation of any kind in the wild, flat
jungle of river bottom. Even to some of us — children though
we were, yet we were descended of literate, town-bred peo-
ple— it possessed inferences of secret and violent blood, of
savage and sudden destruction, as though the yells and hatch-
ets which we associated with Indians through the hidden and
secret dime novels which we passed among ourselves were
but trivial and momentary manifestations of what dark
power still dwelled or lurked there, sinister, a little sar-
donic, like a dark and nameless beast lightly and lazily slum-
bering with bloody jaws — this, perhaps, due to the fact that
a remnant of a once powerful clan of the Chickasaw tribe
still lived beside it under Government protection. They now
had American names and they lived as the sparse white peo-
ple who surrounded them in turn lived.

Yet we never saw them, since they never came to town,
having their own settlement and store. When we grew older
we realized that they were no wilder or more illiterate than
the white people, and that probably their greatest deviation
from the norm — and this, in our country, no especial devia-
tion— was the fact that they were a little better than suspect
to manufacture moonshine whisky back in the swamps. Yet
to us, as children, they were a little fabulous, their swamp-
hidden lives inextricable from the life of the dark mound,

66 The Country

which some of us had never seen, yet of which we had all
heard, as though they had been set by the dark powers to be.
guardians of it.

As I said, some of us had never seen the mound, yet all of
us had heard of it, talked of it as boys will. It was as much a
part of our lives and background as the land itself, as the lost
Civil War and Sherman's march, or that there were Negroes
among us living in economic competition who bore our
family names; only more immediate, more potential and alive.
When I was fifteen, a companion and I, on a dare, went into
the mound one day just at sunset. We saw some of those In-
dians for the first time; we got directions from them and
reached the top of the mound just as the sun set. We had
camping equipment with us, but we made no fire. We didn't
even make down our beds. We just sat side by side on that
mound until it became light enough to find our way back to
the road. We didn't talk. When we looked at each other in
the gray dawn, our faces were gray, too, quiet, very grave.
When we reached town again, we didn't talk either. We just
parted and went home and went to bed. That's what we
thought, felt, about the mound. We were children, it is true,
yet we were descendants of people who read books and who
were — or should have been — beyond superstition and im-
pervious to mindless fear.

Now Ratliff tells about Lucius Provine and his hiccup.

When I got back to town, the first fellow I met says,
"What happened to your face, Ratliff? Was De Spain using
you in place of his bear hounds?"

"No, boys," I says. "Hit was a cattymount."

"What was you trying to do to hit, Ratliff?" a fellow says.

"Boys," I says, "be dog if I know."

And that was the truth. Hit was a good while after they
had done hauled Luke Provine offen me that I found that

A Bear Hunt 67

out. Because I never knowed who Old Man Ash was, no
more than Luke did. I just knowed that he was Major's nig-
ger, a-helping around camp. All I knowed, when the whole
thing started, was what I thought I was aiming to do — to
maybe help Luke sho enough, or maybe at the outside to just
have a little fun with him without hurting him, or even
maybe to do Major a little favor by getting Luke outen camp
for a while. And then hyer hit is about midnight and that
durn fellow comes swurging outen the woods wild as a
skeered deer, and runs in where they are setting at the poker
game, and I says, "Well, you ought to be satisfied. You done
run clean out from under them." And he stopped dead still
and give me a kind of glare of wild astonishment; he didn't
even know that they had quit; and then he swurged all over
me like a barn falling down.

Hit sho stopped that poker game. Hit taken three or four
of them to drag him off en me, with Major turned in his chair
with a set of threes in his hand, a-hammering on the table
and hollering cusses. Only a right smart of the helping they
done was stepping on my face and hands and feet. Hit was
like a fahr — the fellows with the water hose done the most
part of the damage.

"What the tarnation hell does this mean?" Major hollers,
with three or four fellows holding Luke, and him crying like
a baby.

"He set them on me!" Luke says. "He was the one sent me
up there, and I'm a-going to kill him!"

"Set who on you?" Major says.

"Them Indians!" Luke says, crying. Then he tried to get
at me again, flinging them fellows holding his arms around
like they was rag dolls, until Major pure cussed him quiet.
He's a man yet. Don't let hit fool you none because he claims
he ain't strong enough to work. Maybe hit's because he ain't
never wore his strength down toting around one of them

68 The Country

little black satchels full of pink galluses and shaving soap.
Then Major asked me what hit was all about, and I told him
how I had just been trying to help Luke get shed of them
hiccups.

Be dog if I didn't feel right sorry for him. I happened to
be passing out that way, and so I just thought I would drop
in on them and see what luck they was having, and I druv up
about sundown, and the first fellow I see was Luke. I wasn't
surprised, since this here would be the biggest present gather-
ing of men in the county, let alone the free eating and
whisky, so I says, "Well, this is a surprise." And he says:

"Hic-uh! Hic-ow! Hic-oh! Hie— oh, God!" He had done
already had them since nine o'clock the night before; he had
been teching the jug ever' time Major offered him one and
ever' time he could get to hit when Old Man Ash wasn't
looking; and two days before Major had killed a bear, and I
reckon Luke had already et more possum-rich bear pork —
let alone the venison they had, with maybe a few coons and
squirls throwed in for seasoning — than he could have hauled
off in a waggin. So here he was, going three times to the min-
ute, like one of these here clock bombs; only hit was bear
meat and whisky instead of dynamite, and so he couldn't ex-
plode and put himself outen his misery.

They told me how he had done already kept ever'body
awake most of the night before, and how Major got up mad
anyway, and went off with his gun and Ash to handle them
two bear hounds, and Luke following — outen pure misery, I
reckon, since he hadn't slept no more than nobody else —
walking along behind Major, saying, "Hic-ah! Hic-ow! Hic-
oh! Hie — oh, Lord! " until Major turns on him and says:

"Get to hell over yonder with them shotgun fellows on
the deer stands. How do you expect me to walk up on a bear
or even hear the dogs when they strike? I might as well be
riding a motorcycle."

A Bear Hunt 69

So Luke went on back to where the deer standers was
along the log-line levee. I reckon he never so much went
away as he kind of died away in the distance like that ere mo-
torcycle Major mentioned. He never tried to be quiet. I
reckon he knowed hit wouldn't be no use. He never tried to
keep to the open, neither. I reckon he thought that any fool
would know from his sound that he wasn't no deer. No. I
reckon he was so mizzable by then that he hoped somebody
would shoot him. But nobody never, and he come to the first
stand, where Uncle Ike McCaslin was, and set down on a log
behind Uncle Ike with his elbows on his knees and his face
in his hands, going, "Hic-uh! Hic-uh! Hic-uh! Hic-uh!"
until Uncle Ike turns and says:

"Confound you, boy; get away from here. Do you reckon
any varmint in the world is going to walk up to a hay baler?
Go drink some water."

"I done already done that," Luke says, without moving.
"I been drinking water since nine o'clock last night. I done
already drunk so much water that if I was to fall down I
would gush like a artesian well."

"Well, go away anyhow," Uncle Ike says. "Get away
from here."

So Luke gets up and kind of staggers away again, kind of
dying away again like he was run by one of these hyer one-
cylinder gasoline engines, only a durn sight more often and
regular. He went on down the levee to where the next stand
was, and they druv him way from there, and he went on
toward the next one. I reckon he was still hoping that some-
body would take pity on him and shoot him, because now he
kind of seemed to give up. Now, when he come to the "oh,
God" part of hit, they said you could hyear him clean back
to camp. They said he would echo back from the canebrake
across the river like one of these hyer loud-speakers down in
a well. They said that even the dogs on the trail quit baying,

70 The Country

and so they all come up and made him come back to camp.
That's where he was when I come in. And Old Man Ash was
there, too, where him and Major had done come in so Major
could take a nap, and neither me nor Luke noticing him
except as just another nigger around.

That was hit. Neither one of us knowed or even thought
about him. I be dog if hit don't look like sometimes that when
a fellow sets out to play a joke, hit ain't another fellow he's
playing that joke on; hit's a kind of big power laying still
somewhere in the dark that he sets out to prank with without
knowing hit, and hit all depends on whether that ere power is
in the notion to take a joke or not, whether or not hit blows
up right in his face like this one did in mine. Because I says,
"You done had them since nine o'clock yesterday? That's
nigh twenty-four hours. Seems like to me you'd 'a' done
something to try to stop them." And him looldng at me like
he couldn't make up his mind whether to jump up and bite
my head off or just to try and bite hisn off, saying "Hic-uh!
Hic-uh!" slow and regular. Then he says,

"I don't want to get shed of them. I like them. But if you
had them, I would get shed of them for you. You want to
know how?"

"How? "I says.

"I'd just tear your head off. Then you wouldn't have
nothing to hiccup with. They wouldn't worry you then.
I'd be glad to do hit for you."

"Sho now," I says, looking at him setting there on the
kitchen steps — hit was after supper, but he hadn't et none,
being as his throat had done turned into a one-way street on
him, you might say — going "Hic-uh! Hic-oh! Hic-oh! Hic-
uh!" because I reckon Major had done told him what would
happen to him if he taken to hollering again. I never meant no
harm. Besides, they had done already told me how he had
kept everybody awake all night the night before and had

A Bear Hunt yj

done skeered all the game outen that part of the bottom, and
besides, the walk might help him to pass his own time. So
I says, "I believe I know how you might get shed of them.
But, of course, if you don't want to get shed of them "

And he says, "I just wish somebody would tell me how.
I'd pay ten dollars just to set here for one minute without

saying 'hie' " Well, that set him off sho enough. Hit

was like up to that time his insides had been satisfied with
going uhic-uh" steady, but quiet, but now, when he re-
minded himself, hit was like he had done opened a cut-out,
because right away he begun hollering, "Hie — oh, God!" like
when them fellows on the deer stands had made him come
back to camp, and I heard Major's feet coming bup-bup-bup
across the floor. Even his feet sounded mad, and I says quick,

"Sh-h-h-h! You don't want to get Major mad again, now."

So he quieted some, setting there on the kitchen steps,
with Old Man Ash and the other niggers moving around
inside the kitchen, and he says, "I will try anything you can
sujest. I done tried ever' thing I knowed and ever'thing any-
body else told me to. I done held my breath and drunk water
until I feel just like one of these hyer big automobile tahrs
they use to advertise with, and I hung by my knees offen
that limb yonder for fifteen minutes and drunk a pint bottle
full of water upside down, and somebody said to swallow a
buckshot and I done that. And still I got them. What do you
know that I can do?"

"Well," I says, "I don't know what you would do. But if
hit was me that had them, I'd go up to the mound and get
old John Basket to cure me."

Then he set right still, and then he turned slow and looked
at me; I be dog if for a minute he didn't even hiccup. "John
Basket?" he says.

"Sho," I says. "Them Indians knows all sorts of dodges that
white doctors ain't hyeard about yet. He'd be glad to do

j2 The Country

that much for a white man, too, them pore aboriginees
would, because the white folks have been so good to them —
not only letting them keep that ere hump of dirt that don't
nobody want noways, but letting them use names like ourn
and selling them flour and sugar and farm tools at not no
more than a fair profit above what they would cost a white
man. I hyear tell how pretty soon they are even going to start
letting them come to town once a week. Old Basket would
be glad to cure them hiccups for you."

"John Basket," he says; "them Indians," he says, hiccuping
slow and quiet and steady. Then he says right sudden, "I be
dog if I will!" Then I be dog if hit didn't sound like he was
crying. He jumped up and stood there cussing, sounding like
he was crying. "Hit ain't a man hyer has got any mercy on
me, white or black. Hyer I done suffered and suffered more
than twenty-four hours without food or sleep, and not a
sonabitch of them has any mercy or pity on me!"

"Well, I was trying to," I says. "Hit ain't me that's got
them. I just thought, seeing as how you had done seemed to
got to the place where couldn't no white man help you. But
hit ain't no law making you go up there and get shed of
them." So I made like I was going away. I went back around
the corner of the kitchen and watched him set down on the
steps again, going "Hic-uh! Hic-uh!" slow and quiet again;
and then I seen, through the kitchen window, Old Man Ash
standing just inside the kitchen door, right still, with his head
bent like he was listening. But still I never suspected nothing.
Not even did I suspect nothing when, after a while, I watched
Luke get up again, sudden but quiet, and stand for a minute
looking at the window where the poker game and the folks
was, and then look off into the dark towards the road that
went down the bottom. Then he went into the house, quiet,
and come out a minute later with a lighted lantrun and a
shotgun. I don't know whose gun hit was and I don't reckon

A Bear Hunt 73

he did, nor cared neither. He just come out kind of quiet
and determined, and went on down the road. I could see the
lantrun, but I could hyear him a long time after the lantrun
had done disappeared. I had come back around the kitchen
then and I was listening to him dying away down the bot-
tom, when old Ash says behind me:

"He gwine up dar?"

"Up where? "I says.

"Up to de mound," he says.

"Why, I be dog if I know," I says. "The last time I talked
to him he never sounded like he was fixing to go nowhere.
Maybe he just decided to take a walk. Hit might do him some
good; make him sleep tonight and help him get up a appetite
for breakfast maybe. What do you think?"

But Ash never said nothing. He just went on back into the
kitchen. And still I never suspected nothing. How could I?
I hadn't never even seen Jefferson in them days. I hadn't
never even seen a pair of shoes, let alone two stores in a row
or a arc light.

So I went on in where the poker game was, and I says,
"Well, gentlemen, I reckon we might get some sleep to-
night." And I told them what had happened, because more
than like he would stay up there until daylight rather than
walk them five miles back in the dark, because maybe them
Indians wouldn't mind a little thing like a fellow with hic-
cups, like white folks would. And I be dog if Major didn't
rear up about hit.

"Dammit, Ratliff," he says, "you ought not to done that."

"Why, I just sujested hit to him, Major, for a joke," I says.
"I just told him about how old Basket was a kind of doctor.
I never expected him to take hit serious. Maybe he ain't even
going up there. Maybe's he's just went out after a coon."

But most of them felt about hit like I did. "Let him go,"
Mr. Fraser says. "I hope he walks around all night. Damn if,

74 The Country

I slept a wink for him all night long. . . . Deal the cards.
Uncle Ike."

"Can't stop him now, noways," Uncle Ike says, dealing
the cards. "And maybe John Basket can do something for
his hiccups. Durn young fool, eating and drinking himself to
where he can't talk nor swallow neither. He set behind me
on a log this morning, sounding just like a hay baler. I thought
once I'd have to shoot him to get rid of him. . . . Queen bets
a quarter, gentlemen."

So I set there watching them, thinking now and then about
that durn fellow with his shotgun and his lantrun stumbling
and blundering along through the woods, walking five miles
in the dark to get shed of his hiccups, with the varmints all
watching him and wondering just what kind of a hunt this
was and just what kind of a two-leg varmint hit was that
made a noise like that, and about them Indians up at the
mound when he would come walking in, and I would have
•to laugh until Major says, "What in hell are you mumbling
an J giggling at?"

"iNbthing," I says. "I was just thinking about a fellow
I kncow."

"A-nd damn if you hadn't ought to be out there with him,"
Majc->r says. Then he decided hit was about drink time and he
beg^m to holler for Ash. Finally I went to the door and hol~
lere^d for Ash towards the kitchen, but hit was another one
of i the niggers that answered. When he come in with the
deniijohn and fixings, Major looks up and says "Where's
Ash?"

"He done gone," the nigger says.
"Gone?" Major says. "Gone where?"
"He say he gwine up to'ds de mound," the nigger says.
And still I never knowed, never suspected. I just thought to
myself, "That old nigger has turned powerful tender-hearted
all of a sudden, being skeered for Luke Provine to walk

A Bear Hunt 75

around by himself in the dark. Or maybe Ash likes to listen
to them hiccups," I thought to myself.

"Up to the mound?" Major says. "By dad, if he comes
back here full of John Basket's bust-skull whisky I'll skin
him alive."

"He ain't say what he gwine fer," the nigger says. "All he
tell me when he left, he gwine up to'ds de mound and he be
back by daylight."

"He better be," Major says. "He better be sober too."

So we set there and they went on playing and me watching
them like a durn fool, not suspecting nothing, just thinking
how hit was a shame that that durned old nigger would have
to come in and spoil Luke's trip, and hit come along towards
eleven o'clock and they begun to talk about going to bed,
being as they was all going out on stand tomorrow, when we
hyeard the sound. Hit sounded like a drove of wild horses
coming up that road, and we hadn't no more than turned
towards the door, a-asking one another what in tarnation hit
could be, with Major just saying, "What in the name

of " when hit come across the porch like a harrycane

and down the hall, and the door busted open and there Luke
was. He never had no gun and lantrun then, and his clothes
was nigh tore clean offen him, and his face looked wild as
ere a man in the Jackson a-sylum. But the main thing 1
noticed was that he wasn't hiccuping now. And this time,
too, he was nigh crying.

"They was fixing to kill me! " he says. "They was going to
burn me to death! They had done tried me and tied me onto
the pile of wood, and one of them was coming with the fahr
when I managed to bust loose and run! "

"Who was?" Major says. "What in the tarnation hell are
you talking about?"

"Them Indians!" Luke says. "They was fixing to "

"What?" Major hollers. "Damn to blue blazes, what?"

j6 The Country

And that was where I had to put my foot in hit. He hadn't
never seen me until then. "At least they cured your hiccups,"
I says.

Hit was then that he stopped right still. He hadn't never
even seen me, but he seen me now. He stopped right still and
looked at me with that ere wild face that looked like hit had
just escaped from Jackson and had ought to be took back
there quick.

"What? "he says.

"Anyway, you done run out from under them hiccups,"
I says.

Well, sir, he stood there for a full minute. His eyes had
done gone blank, and he stood there with his head cocked a
little, listening to his own insides. I reckon hit was the first
time he had took time to find out that they was gone. He
stood there right still for a full minute while that ere kind of
shocked astonishment come onto his face. Then he jumped
on me. I was still setting in my chair, and I be dog if for a
minute I didn't think the roof had done fell in.

Well, they got him offen me at last and got him quieted
down, and then they washed me off and give me a drink, and
I felt better. But even with that drink I never felt so good
but what I felt hit was my duty to my honor to call him
outen the back yard, as the fellow says. No, sir. I know when
I done made a mistake and guessed wrong; Major de Spain
wasn't the only man that caught a bear on that hunt; no, sir.
I be dog, if it had been daylight, I'd a hitched up my Ford
and taken out of there. But hit was midnight, and besides,
that nigger, Ash, was on my mind then. I had just begun to
suspect that hit was more to this business than met the nekkid
eye. And hit wasn't no good time then to go back to the
kitchen then and ask him about hit, because Luke was using
the kitchen. Major had give him a drink, too, and he was
back there, making up for them two days he hadn't et, talk-

A Bear Hunt 77

ing a right smart about what he aimed to do to such and such
a sonabitch that would try to play his durn jokes on him, not
mentioning no names; but mostly laying himself in a new set
of hiccups, though I ain't going back to see.

So I waited until daylight, until I hyeard the niggers stir-
ring around in the kitchen; then I went back there. And
there was old Ash, looking like he always did, oiling Major's
Jboots and setting them behind the stove and then taking up
Major's rifle and beginning to load the magazine. He just
looked once at my face when I come in, and went on shoving
ca'tridges into the gun.

"So you went up to the mound last night," I says. He
looked up at me again, quick, and then down again. But he
never said nothing, looking like a durned old frizzle-headed
ape. "You must know some of them folks up there," I says.

"I knows some of um," he says, shoving ca'tridges into
the gun.

"You know old John Basket?" I says.

"I knows some of um," he says, not looking at me.

"Did you see him last night?" I says. He never said noth-
ing at all. So then I changed my tone, like a fellow has to do
to get anything outen a nigger. "Look here," I says. "Look
at me." He looked at me. "Just what did you do up there
last night?"

"Who, me? "he says.

"Come on," I says. "Hit's all over now. Mr. Provine has
done got over his hiccups and we done both forgot about
anything that might have happened when he got back last
night. You never went up there just for fun last night. Or
maybe hit was something you told them up there, told old
man Basket. Was that hit?" He had done quit looking at me,
but he never stopped shoving ca'tridges into that gun. He
looked quick to both sides. "Come on," I says. "Do you want
to tell me what happened up there, or do you want me to

78 The Country

mention to Mr. Provine that you was mixed up in hit some
way?" He never stopped loading the rifle and he never
looked at me, but I be dog if I couldn't almost see his mind
working. "Come on," I says. "Just what was you doing up
there last night?"

Then he told me. I reckon he knowed hit wasn't no use
to try to hide hit then; that if I never told Luke, I could still
tell Major. "I jest dodged him and got dar first en told um
he was a new revenue agent coming up dar tonight, but dat
he warn't much en dat all dey had to do was to give um a
good skeer en likely he would go away. En dey did en he
did."

"Well!" I says. "Well! I always thought I was pretty
good at joking folks," I says, "but I take a back seat for you.
What happened?" I says. "Did you see hit?"

"Never much happened," he says. "Dey jest went down
cle road a piece en atter a while hyer he come a-hickin' en
a-blumpin' up de road wid de lant'un en de gun. They took
de lant'un en de gun away frum him en took him up pon
topper de mound en talked de Injun language at him fer a
while. Den dey piled up some wood en fixed him on hit so
he could git loose in a minute, en den one of dem come up
de hill wid de fire, en he done de rest."

"Well!" I says. "Well, I'll be eternally durned!" And then
all on a sudden hit struck me. I had done turned and was
going out when hit struck me, and I stopped and I says,
"There's one more thing I want to know. Why did you do
hit?"

Now he set there on the wood box, rubbing the gun with
his hand, not looking at me again. "I wuz jest helping you
kyo him of dem hiccups."

"Come on," I says. "That wasn't your reason. What was
hit? Remember, I got a right smart I can tell Mr. Provine
and Major both now. I don't know what Major will do, but
I know what Mr. Provine will do if I was to tell him."

A Bear Hunt 79

And he set there, rubbing that ere rifle with his hand. He
was kind of looking down, like he was thinking. Not like he
was trying to decide whether to tell me or not, but like he
was remembering something from a long time back. And
that's exactly what he was doing, because he says:

"I ain't skeered for him to know. One time dey was a
picnic. Hit was a long time back, nigh twenty years ago.
He was a young man den, en in de middle of de picnic, him
en he brother en nudder white man — I fergit he name — dey
rid up wid dey pistols out en cotch us niggers one at a time
en burned our collars off. Hit was him dat burnt mine."

"And you waited all this time and went to all this trouble,
just to get even with him?" I says.

"Hit warn't dat," he says, rubbing the rifle with his hand.
"Hit wuz de collar. Back in dem days a top nigger hand
made two dollars a week. I paid fo' bits fer dat collar. Hit
wuz blue, wid a red picture of de race betwixt de Natchez
en de Robert E. Lee running around hit. He burnt hit up.
I makes ten dollars a week now. En I jest wish I knowed
where I could buy another collar like dat un fer half of hit.
I wish I did."

Tvuo Soldiers

ME AND PETE would go down to Old Man Killegrew's and
listen to his radio. We would wait until after supper, after
dark, and we would stand outside Old Man Killegrew's par-
lor window, and we could hear it because Old Man Kille-
grew's wife was deaf, and so he run the radio as loud as it
would run, and so me and Pete could hear it plain as Old
Man Killegrew's wife could, I reckon, even standing outside
with the window closed.

And that night I said, "What? Japanese? What's a pearl
harbor?" and Pete said, "Hush."

And so we stood there, it was cold, listening to the fellow
in the radio talking, only I couldn't make no heads nor tails
neither out of it. Then the fellow said that would be all for
a while, and me and Pete walked back up the road to home,
and Pete told me what it was. Because he was nigh twenty
and he had done finished the Consolidated last June and he
knowed a heap: about them Japanese dropping bombs on
Pearl Harbor and that Pearl Harbor was across the water.

"Across what water?" I said. "Across that Government
reservoy up at Oxford?"

"Naw," Pete said. "Across the big water. The Pacific
Ocean."

We went home. Maw and pap was already asleep, and me

Ki

82 The Country

and Pete laid in the bed, and I still couldn't understand where
it was, and Pete told me again — the Pacific Ocean.

"What's the matter with you?" Pete said. "You're going
on nine years old. You been in school now ever since Sep-
tember. Ain't you learned nothing yet?"

"I reckon we ain't got as fer as the Pacific Ocean yet,"
I said.

We was still sowing the vetch then that ought to been all
finished by the fifteenth of November, because pap was still
behind, just like he had been ever since me and Pete had
knowed him. And we had firewood to git in, too, but every
night me and Pete would go down to Old Man Killegrew's
and stand outside his parlor window in the cold and listen to
his radio; then we would come back home and lay in the
bed and Pete would tell me what it was. That is, he would
tell me for a while. Then he wouldn't tell me. It was like he
didn't want to talk about it no more. He would tell me to
shut up because he wanted to go to sleep, but he never
wanted to go to sleep.

He would lay there, a heap stiller than if he was asleep,
and it would be something, I could feel it coming out of him,
like he was mad at me even, only I knowed he wasn't think-
ing about me, or like he was worried about something, and it
wasn't that neither, because he never had nothing to worry
about. He never got behind like pap, let alone stayed behind.
Pap give him ten acres when he graduated from the Con-
solidated, and me and Pete both reckoned pap was durn glad
to get shut of at least ten acres, less to have to worry with
himself; and Pete had them ten acres all sowed to vetch and
busted out and bedded for the winter, and so it wasn't that.
But it was something. And still we would go down to Old
Man Killegrew's every night and listen to his radio, and they
was at it in the Philippines now, but General MacArthur
was holding um. Then we would come back home and lay in

TIVO Soldiers 83

the bed, and Pete wouldn't tell me nothing or talk at all. He
would just lay there still as a ambush and when I would
touch him, his side or his leg would feel hard and still as iron,
until after a while I would go to sleep.

Then one night — it was the first time he had said nothing
to me except to jump on me about not chopping enough
wood at the wood tree where we was cutting — he said, "I
got to go."

"Go where? "I said.

"To that war," Pete said.

"Before we even finish gettin' in the firewood?"

"Firewood, hell," Pete said.

"All right," I said. "When we going to start?"

But he wasn't even listening. He laid there, hard and still
as iron in the dark. "I got to go," he said. "I jest ain't going
to put up with no folks treating the Unity States that way."

"Yes," I said. "Firewood or no firewood, I reckon we got
to go."

This time he heard me. He laid still again, but it was a
different kind of still.

"You? "he said. "To a war?"

"You'll whup the big uns and I'll whup the little uns,"
I said.

Then he told me I couldn't go. At first I thought he just
never wanted me tagging after him, like he wouldn't leave me
go with him when he went sparking them girls of Tull's.
Then he told me the Army wouldn't leave me go because
I was too little, and then I knowed he really meant it and
that I couldn't go nohow noways. And somehow I hadn't
believed until then that he was going himself, but now I
knowed he was and that he wasn't going to leave me go with
him a-tall.

"I'll chop the wood and tote the water for you-all then!"
I said. "You got to have wood and water!"

84 The Country

Anyway, he was listening to me now. He wasn't like iron
now.

He turned onto his side and put his hand on my chest
because it was me that was laying straight and hard on my
back now.

"No," he said. "You got to stay here and help pap."

"Help him what?" I said. "He ain't never caught up no-
how. He can't get no further behind. He can sholy take care
of this little shirttail of a farm while me and you are whup-
ping them Japanese. I got to go too. If you got to go, then
so have I."

"No," Pete said. "Hush now. Hush." And he meant it,
and I knowed he did. Only I made sho from his own mouth.
I quit.

"So I just can't go then," I said.

"No," Pete said. "You just can't go. You're too little, in
the first place, and in the second place "

"All right," I said. "Then shut up and leave me go to
sleep."

So he hushed then and laid back. And I laid there like I
was already asleep, and pretty soon he was asleep and I
knowed it was the wanting to go to the war that had worried
him and kept him awake, and now that he had decided to go,
he wasn't worried any more.

The next morning he told maw and pap. Maw was all
right. She cried.

"No," she said, crying, "I don't want him to go. I would
rather go myself in his place, if I could. I don't want to save
the country. Them Japanese could take it and keep it, so long
as they left me and my family and my children alone. But I
remember my brother Marsh in that other war. He had to go
to that one when he wasn't but nineteen, and our mother
couldn't understand it then any more than I can now. But
she told Marsh if he had to go, he had to go. And so, if Pete's

T*wo Soldiers 85

got to go to this one, he's got to go to it. Jest don't ask me
to understand why."

But pap was the one. He was the feller. "To the war?" he
said. "Why, I just don't see a bit of use in that. You ain't old
enough for the draft, and the country ain't being invaded.
Our President in Washington, D. C, is watching the condi-
tions and he will notify us. Besides, in that other war your ma
just mentioned, I was drafted and sent clean to Texas and was
held there nigh eight months until they finally quit fighting.
It seems to me that that, along with your Uncle Marsh who
received a actual wound on the battlefields of France, is
enough for me and mine to have to do to protect the coun-
try, at least in my lifetime. Besides, what'll I do for help on
the farm with you gone? It seems to me I'll get mighty far
behind."

"You been behind as long as I can remember," Pete said.
"Anyway, I'm going. I got to."

"Of course he's got to go," I said. "Them Japanese "

"You hush your mouth!" maw said, crying. "Nobody's
talking to you! Go and get me a armful of wood! That's
what you can do!"

So I got the wood. And all the next day, while me and
Pete and pap was getting in as much wood as we could in
that time because Pete said how pap's idea of plenty of wood
was one more stick laying against the wall that maw ain't put
on the fire yet, Maw was getting Pete ready to go. She
washed and mended his clothes and cooked him a shoe box
of vittles. And that night me and Pete laid in the bed and
listened to her packing his grip and crying, until after a
while Pete got up in his nightshirt and went back there, and
I could hear them talking, until at last maw said, "You got
to go, and so I want you to go. But I don't understand it,
and I won't never, and so don't expect me to." And Pete
come back and got into the bed again and laid again still and

86 The Country

hard as iron on his back, and then tie said, and he wasn't
talking to me, he wasn't talking to nobody: "I got to go.
I just got to."

"Sho you got to," I said. "Them Japanese " He turned

over hard, he kind of surged over onto his side, looking at
me in the dark.

"Anyway, you're all right," he said. "I expected to have
more trouble with you than with all the rest of them put
together."

"I reckon I can't help it neither," I said. "But maybe it will
run a few years longer and I can get there. Maybe someday
I will jest walk in on you."

"I hope not," Pete said. "Folks don't go to wars for fun.
A man don't leave his maw crying just for fun."

"Then why are you going?" I said.

"I got to," he said. "I just got to. Now you go on to sleep.
I got to ketch that early bus in the morning."

"All right," I said. "I hear tell Memphis is a big place. How
will you find where the Army's at?"

"I'll ask somebody where to go to join it," Pete said. "Go
on to sleep now."

"Is that what you'll ask for? Where to join the Army?"
I said.

"Yes," Pete said. He turned onto his back again. "Shut up
and go to sleep."

We went to sleep. The next morning we et breakfast by
lamplight because the bus would pass at six o'clock. Maw
wasn't crying now. She jest looked grim and busy, putting
breakfast on the table while we et it. Then she finished pack-
ing Pete's grip, except he never wanted to take no grip to
the war, but maw said decent folks never went nowhere, not
even to a war, without a change of clothes and something to
tote them in. She put in the shoe box of fried chicken and
biscuits and she put the Bible in, too, and then it was time to

Two Soldiers 87

go. We didn't know until then that maw wasn't going to the
bus. She jest brought Pete's cap and overcoat, and still she
didn't cry no more, she jest stood with her hands on Pete's
shoulders and she didn't move, but somehow, and just hold-
ing Pete's shoulders, she looked as hard and fierce as when
Pete had turned toward me in the bed last night and tole me
that anyway I was all right.

"They could take the country and keep the country, so
long as they never bothered me and mine," she said. Then
she said, "Don't never forget who you are. You ain't rich
and the rest of the world outside of Frenchman's Bend never
heard of you. But your blood is good as any blood anywhere,
and don't you never forget it."

Then she kissed him, and then we was out of the house,
with pap toting Pete's grip whether Pete wanted him to or
not. There wasn't no dawn even yet, not even after we had
stood on the highway by the mailbox, a while. Then we seen
the lights of the bus coming and I was watching the bus until
it come up and Pete flagged it, and then, sho enough, there
was daylight — it had started while I wasn't watching. And
now me and Pete expected pap to say something else foolish,
like he done before, about how Uncle Marsh getting
wounded in France and that trip to Texas pap taken in 1918
ought to be enough to save the Unity States in 1942, but he
never. He done all right too. He jest said, "Good-by, son.
Always remember what your ma told you and write her
whenever you find the time." Then he shaken Pete's hand,
and Pete looked at me a minute and put his hand on my head
and rubbed my head durn nigh hard enough to wring my
neck off and jumped into the bus, and the feller wound the
door shut and the bus began to hum; then it was moving,
humming and grinding and whining louder and louder; it
was going fast, with two little red lights behind it that never
seemed to get no littler, but just seemed to be running to-

88 The Country

gether until pretty soon they would touch and jest be one
light. But they never did, and then the bus was gone, and
even like it was, I could have pretty nigh busted out crying,
nigh to nine years old and all.

Me and pap went back to the house. All that day we
worked at the wood tree, and so I never had no good chance
until about middle of the afternoon. Then I taken my sling-
shot and I would have liked to took all my bird eggs, too,
because Pete had give me his collection and he holp me with
mine, and he would like to git the box out and look at them
as good as I would, even if he was nigh twenty years old.
But the box was too big to tote a long ways and have to
worry with, so I just taken the shikepoke egg, because it was
the best un, and wropped it up good into a matchbox and hid
it and the slingshot under the corner of the barn. Then we et
supper and went to bed, and I thought then how if I would
'a' had to stayed in that room and that bed like that even for
one more night, I jest couldn't 'a' stood it. Then I could hear
pap snoring, but I never heard no sound from maw, whether
she was asleep or not, and I don't reckon she was. So I taken
my shoes and drapped them out the window, and then I
clumb out like I used to watch Pete do when he was still jest
seventeen and pap held that he was too young yet to be tom-
catting around at night, and wouldn't leave him out, and I
put on my shoes and went to the barn and got the slingshot
and the shikepoke egg and went to the highway.

It wasn't cold, it was jest durn confounded dark, and that
highway stretched on in front of me like, without nobody
using it, it had stretched out half again as fer just like a man
does when he lays down, so that for a time it looked like full
sun was going to ketch me before I had finished them twenty-
two miles to Jefferson. But it didn't. Daybreak was jest start-
ing when I walked up the hill into town. I could smell break-
fast cooking in the cabins and I wished I had thought to

Tivo Soldiers 89

brought me a cold biscuit, but that was too late now. And
Pete had told me Memphis was a piece beyond Jefferson, but
I never knowed it was no eighty miles. So I stood there on
that empty square, with daylight coming and coming and
the street lights still burning and that Law looking down at
me, and me still eighty miles from Memphis, and it had took
me all night to walk jest twenty-two miles, and so, by the
time I got to Memphis at that rate, Pete would 'a7 done
already started for Pearl Harbor.

"Where do you come from?" the Law said.

And I told him again. "I got to get to Memphis. My
brother's there."

"You mean you ain't got any folks around here?" the Law
said. "Nobody but that brother? What are you doing way
off down here and your brother in Memphis?"

And I told him again, "I got to get to Memphis. I ain't got
no time to waste talking about it and I ain't got time to walk
it. I got to git there today."

"Come on here," the Law said.

We went down another street. And there was the bus,
just like when Pete got into it yestiddy morning, except there
wasn't no lights on it now and it was empty. There was a
regular bus dee-po like a railroad dee-po, with a ticket
counter and a feller behind it, and the Law said, "Set down
over there," and I set down on the bench, and the Law said,
"I want to use your telephone," and he talked in the tele-
phone a minute and put it down and said to the feller behind
the ticket counter, "Keep your eye on him. I'll be back as
soon as Mrs. Habersham can arrange to get herself up and
dressed." He went out. I got up and went to the ticket
counter.

"I want to go to Memphis," I said.

"You bet," the feller said. "You set down on the bench
now. Mr. Foote will be back in a minute."

90 The Country

"I don't know no Mr. Foote," I said. "I want to ride that
bus to Memphis."

"You got some money?" he said. "It'll cost you seventy-
two cents."

I taken out the matchbox and unwropped the shikepoke
egg. "I'll swap you this for a ticket to Memphis," I said.

"What's that? "he said.

"It's a shikepoke egg," I said. "You never seen one before.
It's worth a dollar. I'll take seventy-two cents fer it."

"No," he said, "the fellers that own that bus insist on a
cash basis. If I started swapping tickets for bird eggs and
livestock and such, they would fire me. You go and set down
on the bench now, like Mr. Foote "

I started for the door, but he caught me, he put one hand
on the ticket counter and jumped over it and caught up with
me and reached his hand out to ketch my shirt. I whupped
out my pocketknife and snapped it open.

"You put a hand on me and I'll cut it off," I said.

I tried to dodge him and run at the door, but he could
move quicker than any grown man I ever see, quick as
Pete almost. He cut me off and stood with his back against
the door and one foot raised a little, and there wasn't no
other way to get out. "Get back on that bench and stay
there," he said.

And there wasn't no other way out. And he stood there
with his back against the door. So I went back to the bench.
And then it seemed like to me that dee-po was full of folks.
There was that Law again, and there was two ladies in fur
coats and their faces already painted. But they still looked
like they had got up in a hurry and they still never liked it,
a old one and a young one, looking down at me.

"He hasn't got a overcoat!" the old one said. "How in
the world did he ever get down here by himself?"

"I ask you," the Law said. "I couldn't get nothing out of

TIVO Soldiers 91

him except his brother is in Memphis and he wants to get
back up there."

"That's right," I said. "I got to git to Memphis today."

"Of course you must," the old one said. "Are you sure
you can find your brother when you get to Memphis?"

"I reckon I can," I said. "I ain't got but one and I have
knowed him all my life. I reckon I will know him again when
I see him."

The old one looked at me. "Somehow he doesn't look like
he lives in Memphis," she said.

"He probably don't," the Law said. "You can't tell
though. He might live anywhere, overhalls or not. This day

and time they get scattered overnight from he hope to

breakfast; boys and girls, too, almost before they can walk
good. He might have been in Missouri or Texas either yes-
tiddy, for all we know. But he don't seem to have any doubt
his brother is in Memphis. All I know to do is send him up
there and leave him look."

"Yes," the old one said.

The young one set down on the bench by me and opened
a hand satchel and taken out a artermatic writing pen and
some papers.

"Now, honey," the old one said, "we're going to see that
you find your brother, but we must have a case history for
our files first. We want to know your name and your broth-
er's name and where you were born and when your parents
died."

"I don't need no case history neither," I said. "All I want
is to get to Memphis. I got to get there today."

"You see?" the Law said. He said it almost like he enjoyed
it. "That's what I told you."

"You're lucky, at that, Mrs. Habersham," the bus feller
said. "I don't think he's got a gun on him, but he can open
that knife da 1 mean, fast enough to suit any man."

92 The Country

But the old one just stood there looking at me.

"Well," she said. "Well. I really don't know what to do."

"I do," the bus feller said. "I'm going to give him a ticket
out of my own pocket, as a measure of protecting the com-
pany against riot and bloodshed. And when Mr. Foote tells
the city board about it, it will be a civic matter and they will
not only reimburse me, they will give me a medal too. Hey,
Mr. Foote?"

But never nobody paid him no mind. The old one still
stood looking down at me. She said "Well," again. Then she
taken a dollar from her purse and give it to the bus feller.
"I suppose he will travel on a child's ticket, won't he?"

"Wellum," the bus feller said, "I just don't know what
the regulations would be. Likely I will be fired for not crat-
ing him and marking the crate Poison. But I'll risk it."

Then they were gone. Then the Law come back with a
sandwich and give it to me.

"You're sure you can find that brother?" he said.

"I ain't yet convinced why not," I said. "If I don't see Pete
first, he'll see me. He knows me too."

Then the Law went out for good, too, and I et the sand-
wich. Then more folks come in and bought tickets, and then
the bus feller said it was time to go, and I got into the bus
just like Pete done, and we was gone.

I seen all the towns. I seen all of them. When the bus got to
going good, I found out I was jest about wore out for sleep.
But there was too much I hadn't never saw before. We run
out of Jefferson and run past fields and woods, then we
would run into another town and out of that un and past
fields and woods again, and then into another town with
stores and gins and water tanks, and we run along by the
railroad for a spell and I seen the signal arm move, and then
I seen the train and then some more towns, and I was jest
about plumb wore out for sleep, but I couldn't resk it. Then

Two Soldiers 93

Memphis begun. It seemed like, to me, it went on for miles.
We would pass a patch of stores and I would think that was
sholy it and the bus would even stop. But it wouldn't be
Memphis yet and we would go on again past water tanks and
smokestacks on top of the mills, and if they was gins and
sawmills, I never knowed there was that many and I never
seen any that big, and where they got enough cotton and
logs to run um I don't know.

Then I see Memphis. I knowed I was right this time. It
was standing up into the air. It looked like about a dozen
whole towns bigger than Jefferson was set up on one edge
in a field, standing up into the air higher than ara hill in all
Yoknapatawpha County. Then we was in it, with the bus
stopping ever' few feet, it seemed like to me, and cars rushing
past on both sides of it and the street crowded with folks
from ever'where in town that day, until I didn't see how
there could 'a' been nobody left in Mis'sippi a-tall to even
sell me a bus ticket, let alone write out no case histories.
Then the bus stopped. It was another bus dee-po, a heap
bigger than the one in Jefferson. And I said, "All right.
Where do folks join the Army?"

"What?" the bus feller said.

And I said it again, "Where do folks join the Army?"

"Oh," he said. Then he told me how to get there. I was
afraid at first I wouldn't ketch on how to do in a town big
as Memphis. But I caught on all right. I never had to ask but
twice more. Then I was there, and I was durn glad to git out
of all them rushing cars and shoving folks and all that racket
for a spell, and I thought, It won't be long now, and I thought
how if there was any kind of a crowd there that had done
already joined the Army, too, Pete would likely see me
before I seen him. And so I walked into the room. And Pete
wasn't there.

He wasn't even there. There was a soldier with a big arrer-

94 The Country

head on his sleeve, writing, and two fellers standing in front
of him, and there was some more folks there, I reckon. It
seems to me I remember some more folks there.

I went to the table where the soldier was writing, and I
said, "Where's Pete?" and he looked up and I said, "My
brother. Pete Grier. Where is he?"

"What?" the soldier said. "Who?"

And I told him again. "He joined the Army yestiddy.
He's going to Pearl Harbor. So am I. I want to ketch him.
Where you all got him? " Now they were all looking at me,
but I never paid them no mind. "Come on," I said. "Where
is he?"

The soldier had quit writing. He had both hands spraddled
out on the table. "Oh," he said. "You're going, too, hah?"

"Yes," I said. "They got to have wood and water. I can
chop it and tote it. Come on. Where's Pete?"

The soldier stood up. "Who let you in here?" he said. "Go
on. Beat it."

"Durn that," I said. "You tell me where Pete "

I be dog if he couldn't move faster than the bus feller
even. He never come over the table, he come around it, he
was on me almost before I knowed it, so that I jest had time
to jump back and whup out my pocket-knife and snap it
open and hit one lick, and he hollered and jumped back and
grabbed one hand with the other and stood there cussing
and hollering.

One of the other fellers grabbed me from behind, and I
hit at him with the knife, but I couldn't reach him.

Then both of the fellers had me from behind, and then
another soldier come out of a door at the back. He had on a
belt with a britching strop over one shoulder.

"What the hell is this?" he said.

"That little son cut me with a knife!" the first sol
dier hollered. When he said that I tried to get at him again.

Two Soldiers 95

but both them fellers was holding me, two against one, and
the soldier with the backing strop said, "Here, here. Put your
knife up, feller. None of us are armed. A man don't knife-
fight folks that are barehanded." I could begin to hear him
then. He sounded jest like Pete talked to me. "Let him go,"
he said. They let me go. "Now what's all the trouble about?"
And I told him. "I see," he said. "And you come up to see
if he was all right before he left." •

"No," I said. "I came to "

But he had already turned to where the first soldier was
wropping a handkerchief around his hand.

"Have you got him?" he said. The first soldier went back
to the table and looked at some papers.

"Here he is," he said. "He enlisted yestiddy. He's in a
detachment leaving this morning for Little Rock." He had a
watch stropped on his arm. He looked at it. "The train leaves
in about fifty minutes. If I know country boys, they're prob-
ably all down there at the station right now."

"Get him up here," the one with the backing strop said.
"Phone the station. Tell the porter to get him a cab. And you
come with me," he said.

It was another office behind that un, with jest a table and
some chairs. We set there while the soldier smoked, and it
wasn't long; I knowed Pete's feet soon as I heard them. Then
the first soldier opened the door and Pete come in. He never
had no soldier clothes on. He looked jest like he did when
he got on the bus yestiddy morning, except it seemed to me
like it was at least a week, so much had happened, and I had
done had to do so much traveling. He come in and there he
was, looking at me like he hadn't never left home, except that
here we was in Memphis, on the way to Pearl Harbor.

"What in durnation are you doing here?" he said.

And I told him, "You got to have wood and water to
cook with. I can chop it and tote it for you-all."

96 The Country

"No," Pete said. "You're going back home."

"No, Pete," I said. "I got to go too. I got to. It hurts my
heart, Pete."

"No," Pete said. He looked at the soldier. "I jest don't
know what could have happened to him, lootenant," he said.
"He never drawed a knife on anybody before in his life."
He looked at me. "What did you do it for? "

"I don't know," I said. "I jest had to. I jest had to git here*
I jest had to find you."

"Well, don't you never do it again, you hear?" Pete said.
"You put that knife in your pocket and you keep it there.
If I ever again hear of you drawing it on anybody, I'm com-
ing back from wherever I am at and whup the fire out of
you. You hear me?"

"I would pure cut a throat if it would bring you back to
stay," I said. "Pete," I said. "Pete."

"No," Pete said. Now his voice wasn't hard and quick no
more, it was almost quiet, and I knowed now I wouldn't
never change him. "You must go home. You must look after
maw, and I am depending on you to look after my ten acres.
I want you to go back home. Today. Do you hear?"

"I hear," I said.

"Can he get back home by himself?" the soldier said.

"He come up here by himself," Pete said.

"I can get back, I reckon," I said. "I don't live in but one
place. I don't reckon it's moved."

Pete taken a dollar out of his pocket and give it to me.
"That'll buy your bus ticket right to our mailbox," he said.
"I want you to mind the lootenant. He'll send you to the
bus. And you go back home and you take care of maw and
look after my ten acres and keep that durn knife in your
pocket. You hear me?"

"Yes, Pete," I said.

"All right," Pete said. "Now I got to go." He put his hand

Two Soldiers 97

on my head again. But this time he never wrung my neck.
He just laid his hand on my head a minute. And then I be
dog if he didn't lean down and kiss me, and I heard his feet
and then the door, and I never looked up and that was all,
me setting there, rubbing the place where Pete kissed me
and the soldier throwed back in his chair, looking out the
window and coughing. He reached into his pocket and
handed something to me without looking around. It was a
piece of chewing gum.

"Much obliged," I said. "Well, I reckon I might as well
start back. I got a right fer piece to go."

"Wait," the soldier said. Then he telephoned again and I
said again I better start back, and he said again, "Wait. Re-
member what Pete told you."

So we waited, and then another lady come in, old, too, in
a fur coat, too, but she smelled all right, she never had no
artermatic writing pen nor no case history neither. She come
in and the soldier got up, and she looked around quick until
she saw me, and come and put her hand on my shoulder light
and quick and easy as maw herself might 'a' done it.

"Come on," she said. "Let's go home to dinner."

"Nome," I said. "I got to ketch the bus to Jefferson."

"I know. There's plenty of time. We'll go home and eat
dinner first."

She had a car. And now we was right down in the middle
of all them other cars. We was almost under the busses, and
all them crowds of people on the street close enough to
where I could have talked to them if I had knowed who
they was. After a while she stopped the car. "Here we are,"
she said, and I looked at it, and if all that was her house, she
sho had a big family. But all of it wasn't. We crossed a hall
with trees growing in it and went into a little room without
nothing in it but a nigger dressed up in a uniform a heap
shinier than them soldiers had, and the nigger shut the door,

98 The Country

and then I hollered, "Look out!" and grabbed, but it was all
right; that whole little room jest went right on up and
stopped and the door opened and we was in another hall,
and the lady unlocked a door and we went in, and there was
another soldier, a old feller, with a britching strop, too, and
a silver-colored bird on each shoulder.

"Here we are," the lady said. "This is Colonel McKellogg.
Now, what would you like for dinner? "

"I reckon I'll jest have some ham and eggs and coffee,"
I said.

She had done started to pick up the telephone. She stopped,
"Coffee?" she said. "When did you start drinking coffee?"

"I don't know," I said. "I reckon it was before I could
remember."

"You're about eight, aren't you?" she said.

"Nome," I said. "I'm eight and ten months. Going on
eleven months."

She telephoned then. Then we set there and I told them
how Pete had jest left that morning for Pearl Harbor and I
had aimed to go with him, but I would have to go back
home to take care of maw and look after Pete's ten acres,
and she said how they had a little boy about my size, too, in
a school in the East. Then a nigger, another one, in a short
kind of shirttail coat, rolled a kind of wheelbarrer in. It had
my ham and eggs and a glass of milk and a piece of pie, too,
and I thought I was hungry. But when I taken the first bite
I found out I couldn't swallow it, and I got up quick.

"I got to go," I said.

"Wait," she said.

"I got to go," I said.

"Just a minute," she said. "I've already telephoned for the
car. It won't be but a minute now. Can't you drink the milk
even? Or maybe some of your coffee?"

Two Soldiers 99

"Nome," I said. "I ain't hungry. Til eat when I git home."
Then the telephone rung. She never even answered it.

"There," she said. "There's the car." And we went back
down in that 'ere little moving room with the dressed-up
nigger. This time it was a big car with a soldier driving it.
I got into the front with him. She give the soldier a dollar.
"He might get hungry," she said. "Try to find a decent
place for him."

"O.K., Mrs. McKellogg," the soldier said.

Then we was gone again. And now I could see Memphis
good, bright in the sunshine, while we was swinging around
it. And first thing I knowed, we was back on the same high-
way the bus run on this morning — the patches of stores and
them big gins and sawmills, and Memphis running on for
miles, it seemed like to me, before it begun to give out. Then
we was running again between the fields and woods, run-
ning fast now, and except for that soldier, it was like I
hadn't never been to Memphis a-tall. We was going fast now.
At this rate, before I knowed it we would be home again, and
I thought about me riding up to Frenchman's Bend in this
big car with a soldier running it, and all of a sudden I begun
to cry. I never knowed I was fixing to, and I couldn't stop
it. I set there by that soldier, crying. We was going fast.

Shall Not Perish

WHEN THE MESSAGE came about Pete, Father and I had
already gone to the field. Mother got it out of the mailbox
after we left and brought it down to the fence, and she
already knew beforehand what it was because she didn't
even have on her sunbonnet, so she must have been watching
from the kitchen window when the carrier drove up. And
I already knew what was in it too. Because she didn't speak.
She just stood at the fence with the little pale envelope that
didn't even need a stamp on it in her hand, and it was me
that hollered at Father, from further away across the field
than he was, so that he reached the fence first where Mother
waited even though I was already running. "I know what
it is," Mother said. "But can't open it. Open it."

"No it ain't!" I hollered, running. "No it ain't!" Then I
was hollering, "No, Pete! No, Pete!" Then I was hollering,
"God damn them Japs! God damn them Japs!" and then I
was the one Father had to grab and hold, trying to hold me,
having to wrastle with me like I was another man instead of
just nine.

And that was all. One day there was Pearl Harbor. And
the next week Pete went to Memphis, to join the army and
go there and help them; and one morning Mother stood at the
field fence with ^ little scrap of paper not even big enough to
start a fire with, that didn't even need a stamp on the enve-

10!

io2 The Country

lope, saying, A ship 'was. NOIV it is not. Your son 'was one of
them. And we allowed ourselves one day to grieve, and that
was all. Because it was April, the hardest middle push of
planting time, and there was the land, the seventy acres which
were our bread and fire and keep, which had outlasted the
Griers before us because they had done right by it, and had
outlasted Pete because while he was here he had done his part
to help and would outlast Mother and Father and me if we
did ours.

Then it happened again. Maybe we had forgotten that it
could and was going to, again and again, to people who loved
sons and brothers as we loved Pete, until the day finally came
when there would be an end to it. After that day when we
saw Pete's name and picture in the Memphis paper, Father
would bring one home with him each time he went to town.
And we would see the pictures and names of soldiers and
sailors from other counties and towns in Mississippi and Ar-
kansas and Tennessee, but there wasn't another from ours,
and so after a while it did look like Pete was going to be all.

Then it happened again. It was late July, a Friday. Father
had gone to town early on Homer Bookwright's cattletruck
and now it was sundown. I had just come up from the field
with the light sweep and I had just finished stalling the mule
and come out of the barn when Homer's truck stopped at the
mailbox and Father got down and came up the lane, with a
sack of flour balanced on his shoulder and a package under
his arm and the folded newspaper in his hand. And I took one
look at the folded paper and then no more. Because I knew it
too, even if he always did have one when he came back from
town. Because it was bound to happen sooner or later; it
would not be just us out of all Yoknapatawpha County who
had loved enough to have sole right to grief. So I just met
him and took part of the load and turned beside him, and we
entered the kitchen together where our cold supper waited

Shall Not Perish 103

on the table and Mother sat in the last of sunset in the open
door, her hand and arm strong and steady on the dasher of
the churn.

When the message came about Pete, Father never touched
her. He didn't touch her now. He just lowered the flour onto
the table and went to the chair and held out the folded paper.
"It's Major de Spain's boy," he said. "In town. The av-aytor.
That was home last fall in his officer uniform. He run his
airplane into a Japanese battleship and blowed it up. So they
knowed where he was at." And Mother didn't stop the churn
for a minute either, because even I could tell that the butter
had almost come. Then she got up and went to the sink and
washed her hands and came back and sat down again.

"Read it," she said.

So Father and I found out that Mother not only knew all
the time it was going to happen again, but that she already
knew what she was going to do when it did, not only this
time but the next one too, and the one after that and the one
after that, until the day finally came when all the grieving
about the earth, the rich and the poor too, whether they lived
with ten nigger servants in the fine big painted houses in
town or whether they lived on and by seventy acres of not
extra good land like us or whether all they owned was the
right to sweat today for what they would eat tonight, could
say, At least this there 'was some point to 'why *we grieved.

We fed and milked and came back and ate the cold sup-
per, and I built a fire in the stove and Mother put on the
kettle and whatever else would heat enough water for two,
and I fetched in the washtub from the back porch, and while
Mother washed the dishes and cleaned up the kitchen, Father
and I sat on the front steps. This was about the time of day
that Pete and I would walk the two miles down to Old Man
Killegrew's house last December, to listen to the radio teli
about Pearl Harbor and Manila. But more than Pearl Harbor

104 The Country

and Manila has happened since then, and Pete don't make one
to listen to it. Nor do I: it's like, since nobody can tell us
exactly where he was when he stopped being is, instead of
just becoming *was at some single spot on the earth where
the people who loved him could weight him down with a
stone, Pete still is everywhere about the earth, one among all
the fighters forever, <was or is either. So Mother and Father
and I don't need a little wooden box to catch the voices of
them that saw the courage and the sacrifice. Then Mother
called me back to the kitchen. The water smoked a little in
the washtub, beside the soap dish and my clean nightshirt and
the towel Mother made out of our worn-out cotton sacks,
and I bathe and empty the tub and leave it ready for her, and
we lie down.

Then morning, and we rose. Mother was up first, as al-
ways. My clean white Sunday shirt and pants were waiting,
along with the shoes and stockings I hadn't even seen since
frost was out of the ground. But in yesterday's overalls still
I carried the shoes back to the kitchen where Mother stood
in yesterday's dress at the stove where not only our breakfast
was cooking but Father's dinner too, and set the shoes beside
her Sunday ones against the wall and went to the barn, and
Father and I fed and milked and came back and sat down and
ate while Mother moved back and forth between the table
and the stove till we were done, and she herself sat down.
Then I got out the blacking-box, until Father came and took
it away from me — the polish and rag and brush and the four
shoes in succession. "De Spain is rich," he said. "With a
monkey nigger in a white coat to hold the jar up each time
he wants to spit. You shine all shoes like you aimed yourself
to wear them: just the parts that you can see yourself by
looking down."

Then we dressed. I put on my Sunday shirt and the pants
so stiff with starch that they would stand alone, and carried

Shall Not Perish 105

my stockings back to the kitchen just as Mother entered, car-
rying hers, and dressed too, even her hat, and took my stock-
ings from me and put them with hers on the table beside the
shined shoes, and lifted the satchel down from the cupboard
shelf. It was still in the cardboard box it came in, with the
colored label of the San Francisco drugstore where Pete
bought it — a round, square-ended, water-proof satchel with
a handle for carrying, so that as soon as Pete saw it in the
store he must have known too that it had been almost exactly
made for exactly what we would use it for, with a zipper
opening that Mother had never seen before nor Father either.
That is, we had all three been in the drugstore and the ten-
cent-store in Jefferson but I was the only one who had been
curious enough to find out how one worked, even though
even I never dreamed we would ever own one. So it was me
that zipped it open, with a pipe and a can of tobacco in it for
Father and a hunting cap with a carbide headlight for me
and for Mother the satchel itself, and she zipped it shut and
then open and then Father tried it, running the slide up and
down the little clicking track until Mother made him stop
before he wore it out; and she put the satchel, still open, back
into the box and I fetched in from the barn the empty quart
bottle of cattle-dip and she scalded the bottle and cork and
put them and the clean folded towel into the satchel and set
the box onto the cupboard shelf, the zipper still open because
when we came to need it we would have to open it first and
so we would save that much wear on the zipper too. She
took the satchel from the box and the bottle from the satchel
and filled the bottle with clean water and corked it and put it
back into the satchel with the clean towel and put our shoes
and stockings in and zipped the satchel shut, and we walked
to the road and stood in the bright hot morning beside the
mailbox until the bus came up and stopped.

It was the school bus, the one I rode back and forth to

io6 The Country

Frenchman's Bend to school in last winter, and that Pete rode
in every morning and evening until he graduated, but going
in the opposite direction now, in to Jefferson, and only on
Saturday, seen for a long time down the long straight stretch
of Valley road while other people waiting beside other mail-
boxes got into it. Then it was our turn. Mother handed the
two quarters to Solon Quick, who built it and owned it and
drove it, and we got in too and it went on, and soon there was
no more room for the ones that stood beside the mailboxes
and signalled and then it went fast, twenty miles then ten
then five then one, and up the last hill to where the concrete
streets began, and we got out and sat on the curb and Mother
opened the satchel and took our shoes and the bottle of water
and the towel and we washed our feet and put on our shoes
and stockings and Mother put the bottle and towel back and
shut the bag.

And we walked beside the iron picket fence long enough
to front a cotton patch; we turned into the yard which was
bigger than farms I had seen and followed the gravel drive
wider and smoother than roads in Frenchman's Bend, on to
the house that to me anyway looked bigger than the court-
house, and mounted the steps between the stone columns
and crossed the portico that would have held our whole
house, galleries and all, and knocked at the door. And then
it never mattered whether our shoes were shined at all or
not: the whites of the monkey nigger's eyes for just a second
when he opened the door for us, the white of his coat for
just a second at the end of the hall before it was gone too,
his feet not making any more noise than a cat's leaving us
to find the right door by ourselves, if we could. And we
did — the rich man's parlor that any woman in Frenchman's
Bend and I reckon in the rest of the county too could have
described to the inch but which not even the men who would
come to Major de Spain after bank-hours or on Sunday to

Shall Not Perish 107

ask to have a note extended, had ever seen, with a light
hanging in the middle of the ceiling the size of our whole
washtub full of chopped-up ice and a gold-colored harp
that would have blocked our barn door and a mirror that
a man on a mule could have seen himself and the mule both
in, and a table shaped like a coffin in the middle of the floor
with the Confederate flag spread over it and the photograph
of Major de Spain's son and the open box with the medal in
it and a big blue automatic pistol weighting down the flag,
and Major de Spain standing at the end of the table with his
hat on until after a while he seemed to hear and recognize
the name which Mother spoke; — not a real major but just
called that because his father had been a real one in the old
Confederate war, but a banker powerful in money and
politics both, that Father said had made governors and sen-
ators too in Mississippi; — an old man, too old you would have
said to have had a son just twenty- three; too old anyway
to have had that look on his face.

"Ha," he said. "I remember now. You too were advised
that your son poured out his blood on the altar of unpre-
paredness and inefficiency. What do you want?"

"Nothing," Mother said. She didn't even pause at the
door. She went on toward the table. "We had nothing to
bring you. And I don't think I see anything here we would
want to take away."

"You're wrong," he said. "You have a son left. Take what
they have been advising to me: go back home and pray.
Not for the dead one: for the one they have so far left you,
that something somewhere, somehow will save him!" She
wasn't even looking at him. She never had looked at him
again. She just went on across that barn-sized room exactly
as I have watched her set mine and Father's lunch pail into
the fence corner when there wasn't time to stop the plows
to eat, and turn back toward the house.

io8 The Country

"I can tell you something simpler than that," she said.
"Weep." Then she reached the table. But it was only her
body that stopped, her hand going out so smooth and quick
that his hand only caught her wrist, the two hands locked
together on the big blue pistol, between the photograph and
the little hunk of iron medal on its colored ribbon, against
that old flag that a heap of people I knew had never seen and
a heap more of them wouldn't recognize if they did, and over
all of it the old man's voice that ought not to have sounded
like that either.

"For his country! He had no country: this one I too re-
pudiate. His country and mine both was ravaged and polluted
and destroyed eighty years ago, before even I was born. His
forefathers fought and died for it then, even though what
they fought and lost for was a dream. He didn't even have
a dream. He died for an illusion. In the interests of usury,
by the folly and rapacity of politicians, for the glory and
aggrandisement of organized labor!"

"Yes," Mother said. "Weep."

"The fear of elective servants for their incumbencies! The
subservience of misled workingmen for the demagogues who
misled them! Shame? Grief? How can poltroonery and
rapacity and voluntary thralldom know shame or grief?"

"All men are capable of shame," Mother said. "Just as all
men are capable of courage and honor and sacrifice. And
grief too. It will take time, but they will learn it. It will take
more grief than yours and mine, and there will be more. But
it will be enough."

"When? When all the young men are dead? What will
there be left then worth the saving?"

"I know," Mother said. "I know. Our Pete was too young
too to have to die." Then I realized that their hands were no
longer locked, that he was erect again and that the pistol
was hanging slack in Mother's hand against her side, and for

Shall Not Perish 109

a minute I thought she was going to unzip the satchel and
take the towel out of it. But she just laid the pistol back on
the table and stepped up to him and took the handkerchief
from his breast pocket and put it into his hand and stepped
back. "That's right," she said. "Weep. Not for him: for us,
the old, who don't know why. What is your Negro's name?"

But he didn't answer. He didn't even raise the handkerchief
to his face. He just stood there holding it, like he hadn't
discovered yet that it was in his hand, or perhaps even what
it was Mother had put there. "For us, the old," he said. "You
believe. You have had three months to learn again, to find
out why; mine happened yesterday. Tell me."

"I don't know," Mother said. "Maybe women are not
supposed to know why their sons must die in battle; maybe
all they are supposed to do is just to grieve for them. But my
son knew why And my brother went to the war when I was
a girl, and our mother didn't know why either, but he did.
And my grandfather was in that old one there too, and I
reckon his mother didn't know why either, but I reckon
he did. And my son knew why he had to go to this one, and
he knew I knew he did even though I didn't, just as he knew
that this child here and I both knew he would not come back.
But he knew why, even if I didn't, couldn't, never can. So it
must be all right, even if I couldn't understand it. Because
there is nothing in him that I or his father didn't put there.
What is your Negro's name?"

He called the name then. And the nigger wasn't so far
away after all, though when he entered Major de Spain
had already turned so that his back was toward the door.
He didn't look around. He just pointed toward the table with
the hand Mother had put the handkerchief into, and the
nigger went to the table without looking at anybody and
without making any more noise on the floor than a cat and
he didn't stop at all; it looked to me like he had already

no The Country

turned and started back before he even reached the table:
one flick of the black hand and the white sleeve and the
pistol vanished without me even seeing him touch it and
when he passed me again going out, I couldn't see what he
had done with it. So Mother had to speak twice before I
knew she was talking to me.
"Come," she said.

"Wait," said Major de Spain. He had turned again, facing
us. "What you and his father gave him. You must know
what that was."

"I know it came a long way," Mother said. "So it must
have been strong to have lasted through all of us. It must
have been all right for him to be willing to die for it after
that long time and coming that far. Come," she said again.
"Wait," he said. "Wait. Where did you come from?"
Mother stopped. "I told you: Frenchman's Bend."
"I know. How? By wagon? You have no car."
"Oh," Mother said. "We came in Mr. Quick's bus. He
comes in every Saturday."

"And waits until night to go back. I'll send you back in my
car." He called the nigger's name again. But Mother stopped
him. "Thank you," she said. "We have already paid Mr.
Quick. He owes us the ride back home."

There was an old lady born and raised in Jefferson who
died rich somewhere in the North and left some money to
the town to build a museum with. It was a house like a
church, built for nothing else except to hold the pictures
she picked out to put in it — pictures from all over the United
States, painted by people who loved what they had seen or
where they had been born or lived enough to want to paint
pictures of it so that other people could see it too; pictures
of men and women and children, and the houses and streets
and cities and the woods and fields and streams where they
Worked or lived or pleasured, so that all the people who

Shall Not Perish 1 1 1

wanted to, people like us from Frenchman's Bend or from
littler places even than Frenchman's Bend in our county or
beyond our state too, could come without charge into the
cool and the quiet and look without let at the pictures of
men and women and children who were the same people
that we were even if their houses and barns were different
and their fields worked different, with different things grow-
ing in them. So it was already late when we left the museum,
and later still when we got back to where the bus waited,
and later still more before we got started, although at least
we could get into the bus and take our shoes and stockings
back off. Because Mrs. Quick hadn't come yet and so Solon
had to wait for her, not because she was his wife but because
he made her pay a quarter out of her egg-money to ride to
town and back on Saturday, and he wouldn't go off and
leave anybody who had paid him. And so, even though the
bus ran fast again, when the road finally straightened out into
the long Valley stretch, there was only the last sunset spok-
ing out across the sky, stretching all the way across America
from the Pacific ocean, touching all the places that the men
and women in the museum whose names we didn't even
know had loved enough to paint pictures of them, like a
big soft fading wheel.

And I remembered how Father used to always prove any
point he wanted to make to Pete and me, by Grandfather.
It didn't matter whether it was something he thought we
ought to have done and hadn't, or something he would have
stopped us from doing if he had just known about it in
time. "Now, take your Grandpap," he would say. I could
remember him too: Father's grandfather even, old, so old
you just wouldn't believe it, so old that it would seem to
me he must have gone clean back to the old fathers in
Genesis and Exodus that talked face to face with God, and
Grandpap outlived them all except him. It seemed to me he

ii2 The Country

must have been too old even to have actually fought in the
old Confederate war, although that was about all he talked
about, not only when we thought that maybe he was awake
but even when we knew he must be asleep, until after a
while we had to admit that we never knew which one he
really was. He would sit in his chair under the mulberry in
the yard or on the sunny end of the front gallery or in his
corner by the hearth; he would start up out of the chair and
we still wouldn't know which one he was, whether he never
had been asleep or whether he hadn't ever waked even when
he jumped up, hollering, "Look out! Look out! Here they
come!" He wouldn't even always holler the same name;
they wouldn't even always be on the same side or even
soldiers: Forrest, or Morgan, or Abe Lincoln, or Van Dorn,
or Grant or Colonel Sartoris himself, whose people still
lived in our county, or Mrs. Rosa Millard, Colonel Sartoris's
mother-in-law who stood off the Yankees and carpetbaggers
too for the whole four years of the war until Colonel Sartoris
could get back home. Pete thought it was just funny. Father
and I were ashamed. We didn't know what Mother thought
nor even what it was, until the afternoon at the picture show.
It was a continued picture, a Western; it seemed to me
that it had been running every Saturday afternoon for years.
Pete and Father and I would go in to town every Saturday
to see it, and sometimes Mother would go too, to sit there
in the dark while the pistols popped and snapped and the
horses galloped and each time it would look like they were
going to catch him but you knew they wouldn't quite, that
there would be some more of it next Saturday and the one
after that and the one after that, and always the week in
between for me and Pete to talk about the villain's pearl-
handled pistol that Pete wished was his and the hero's spotted
horse that I wished was mine. Then one Saturday Mother
decided to take Grandpap. He sat between her and me,

Shall Not Perish 113

already asleep again, so old now that he didn't even have
to snore, until the time came that you could have set a watch
by every Saturday afternoon: when the horses all came
plunging down the cliff and whirled around and came boil-
ing up the gully until in just one more jump they would
come clean out of the screen and go galloping among the
little faces turned up to them like corn shucks scattered
across a lot. Then Grandpap waked up. For about five
seconds he sat perfectly still. I could even feel him sitting
still, he sat so still so hard. Then he said, "Cavalry!" Then
he was on his feet. "Forrest!" he said. "Bedford Forrest! Get
out of here! Get out of the way!" clawing and scrabbling
from one seat to the next one whether there was anybody
in them or not, into the aisle with us trying to follow and
catch him, and up the aisle toward the door still hollering,
"Forrest! Forrest! Here he comes! Get out of the way!"
and outside at last, with half the show behind us and Grand-
pap blinking and trembling at the light and Pete propped
against the wall by his arms like he was being sick, laughing,
and father shaking Grandpap's arm and saying, "You old
fool! You old fool!" until Mother made him stop. And we
half carried him around to the alley where the wagon was
hitched and helped him in and Mother got in and sat by hims
holding his hand until he could begin to stop shaking. "Go
get him a bottle of beer," she said.

"He don't deserve any beer," Father said. "The old fool,
having the whole town laughing. . . ."

"Go get him some beer!" Mother said. "He's going to sit
right here in his own wagon and drink it. Go on!" And
Father did, and Mother held the bottle until Grandpap got
a good hold on it, and she sat holding his hand until he got
a good swallow down him. Then he begun to stop shaking.
He said, "Ah-h-h," and took another swallow and said,

ii4 The Country

"Ah-h-h," again and then he even drew his other hand out
of Mother's and he wasn't trembling now but just a little,
taking little darting sips at the bottle and saying "Hah! " and
taking another sip and saying "Hah!" again, and not just
looking at the bottle now but looking all around, and his
eyes snapping a little when he blinked. "Fools yourselves! "
Mother cried at Father and Pete and me. "He wasn't running
from anybody! He was running in front of them, hollering
at all clods to look out because better men than they were
coming, even seventy-five years afterwards, still powerful,
still dangerous, still coming!"

And I knew them too. I had seen them too, who had
never been further from Frenchman's Bend than I could
return by night to sleep. It was like the wheel, like the sun-
set itself, hubbed at that little place that don't even show
on a map, that not two hundred people out of all the earth
know is named Frenchman's Bend or has any name at all,
and spoking out in all the directions and touching them all,
never a one too big for it to touch, never a one too little to
be remembered: — the places that men and women have
lived in and loved whether they had anything to paint pic-
tures of them with or not, all the little places quiet enough
to be lived in and loved and the names of them before they
were quiet enough, and the names of the deeds that made
them quiet enough and the names of the men and the women
who did the deeds, who lasted and endured and fought the
battles and lost them and fought again because they didn't
even know they had been whipped, and tamed the wilder-
ness and overpassed the mountains and deserts and died and
still went on as the shape of the United States grew and
went on. I knew them too: the men and women still power-
ful seventy-five years and twice that and twice that again
afterward, still powerful and still dangerous and still com-

Shall Not Perish 1 1 5

ing, North and South and East and West, until the name of
what they did and what they died for became just one single
word, louder than any thunder. It was America, and it
covered all the western earth.

II • THE VILLAGE

A Rose for Emily
Hair

Centaur in Brass

Dry September

Death Drag

Elly

Uncle Willy

Mule in the Yard

That Will Be Fine

That Evening Sun

A Rose for Emily

i

WHEN Miss Emily Grierson died, our whole town went to
her funeral: the men through a sort of respectful affection
for a fallen monument, the women mostly out of curiosity
to see the inside of her house, which no one save an old man-
servant— a combined gardener and cook — had seen in at
least ten years.

It was a big, squarish frame house that had once been
white, decorated with cupolas and spires and scrolled bal*
conies in the heavily lightsome style of the seventies, set on
what had once been our most select street. But garages and
cotton gins had encroached and obliterated even the august
names of that neighborhood; only Miss Emily's house was
left, lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay above the
cotton wagons and the gasoline pumps — an eyesore among
eyesores. And now Miss Emily had gone to join the repre-
sentatives of those august names where they lay in the cedar-
bemused cemetery among the ranked and anonymous
graves of Union and Confederate soldiers who fell at the
battle of Jefferson.

Alive, Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care;
a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town, dating from
that day in 1 894 when Colonel Sartoris, the mayor — he who
fathered the edict that no Negro woman should appear on

119

120 The Village

the streets without an apron — remitted her taxes, the dis-
pensation dating from the death of her father on into
perpetuity. Not that Miss Emily would have accepted
charity. Colonel Sartoris invented an involved tale to the
effect that Miss Emily's father had loaned money to the
town, which the town, as a matter of business, preferred
this way of repaying. Only a man of Colonel Sartoris' gen-
eration and thought could have invented it, and only a
woman could have believed it.

When the next generation, with its more modern ideas,
became mayors and aldermen, this arrangement created
some little dissatisfaction. On the first of the year they mailed
her a tax notice. February came, and there was no reply.
They wrote her a formal letter, asking her to call at the
sheriff's office at her convenience. A week later the mayor
wrote her himself, offering to call or to send his car for her,
and received in reply a note on paper of an archaic shape,
in a thin, flowing calligraphy in faded ink, to the effect that
she no longer went out at all. The tax notice was also en-
closed, without comment.

They called a special meeting of the Board of Aldermen.
A deputation waited upon her, knocked at the door through
which no visitor had passed since she ceased giving china-
painting lessons eight or ten years earlier. They were ad-
mitted by the old Negro into a dim hall from which a
stairway mounted into still more shadow. It smelled of dust
and disuse — a close, dank smell. The Negro led them into
the parlor. It was furnished in heavy, leather-covered furni-
ture. When the Negro opened the blinds of one window,
they could see that the leather was cracked; and when they
sat down, a faint dust rose sluggishly about their thighs,
spinning with slow motes in the single sun-ray. On a tar-
nished gilt easel before the fireplace stood a crayon portrait
of Miss Emily's father.

A Rose for Emily i z i

They rose when she entered — a small, fat woman in
black, with a thin gold chain descending to her waist and
vanishing into her belt, leaning on an ebony cane with a
tarnished gold head. Her skeleton was small and spare; per-
haps that was why what would have been merely plumpness
in another was obesity in her. She looked bloated, like a body
long submerged in motionless water, and of that pallid hue.
Her eyes, lost in the fatty ridges of her face, looked like
two small pieces of coal pressed into a lump of dough as they
moved from one face to another while the visitors stated
their errand.

She did not ask them to sit. She just stood in the door and
listened quietly until the spokesman came to a stumbling
halt. Then they could hear the invisible watch ticking at
the end of the gold chain.

Her voice was dry and cold. "I have no taxes in Jefferson.
Colonel Sartoris explained it to me. Perhaps one of you can
gain access to the city records and satisfy yourselves."

"But we have. We are the city authorities, Miss Emily.
Didn't you get a notice from the sheriff, signed by him?"

"I received a paper, yes," Miss Emily said. "Perhaps he
considers himself the sheriff ... I have no taxes in Jefferson."

"But there is nothing on the books to show that, you see.
We must go by the — "

"See Colonel Sartoris. I have no taxes in Jefferson."

"But, Miss Emily—"

"See Colonel Sartoris." (Colonel Sartoris had been dead
almost ten years.) "I have no taxes in Jefferson. Tobe!" The
Negro appeared. "Show these gentlemen out."

II

So SHE vanquished them, horse and foot, just as she had
vanquished their fathers thirty years before about the smelL

122 The Village

That was two years after her father's death and a short rime
after her sweetheart — the one we believed would marry her
— had deserted her. After her father's death she went out
very little; after her sweetheart went away, people hardly
saw her at all. A few of the ladies had the temerity to call,
but were not received, and the only sign of life about the
place was the Negro man — a young man then — going in
and out with a market basket.

"Just as if a man — any man — could keep a kitchen prop-
erly," the ladies said; so they were not surprised when the
smell developed. It was another link between the gross,
teeming world and the high and mighty Griersons.

A neighbor, a woman, complained to the mayor, Judge
Stevens, eighty years old.

"But what will you have me do about it, madam?" he said.

"Why, send her word to stop it," the woman said. "Isn't
there a law?"

"I'm sure that won't be necessary," Judge Stevens said.
"It's probably just a snake or a rat that nigger of hers killed
in the yard. I'll speak to him about it."

The next day he received two more complaints, one from
a man who came in diffident deprecation. "We really must
do something about it, Judge. I'd be the last one in the world
to bother Miss Emily, but we've got to do something." That
night the Board of Aldermen met — three graybeards and
one younger man, a member of the rising generation.

"It's simple enough," he said. "Send her word to have her
place cleaned up. Give her a certain time to do it in, and if
she don't . . ."

"Dammit, sir," Judge Stevens said, "will you accuse a
lady to her face of smelling bad?"

So the next night, after midnight, four men crossed Miss
Emily's lawn and slunk about the house like burglars, sniffing
along the base of the brickwork and at the cellar openings

A Rose for Emily 1 2 3

while one of them performed a regular sowing motion with
his hand out of a sack slung from his shoulder. They broke
open the cellar door and sprinkled lime there, and in all the
outbuildings. As they recrossed the lawn, a window that
had been dark was lighted and Miss Emily sat in it, the light
behind her, and her upright torso motionless as that of an
idol. They crept quietly across the lawn and into the shadow
of the locusts that lined the street. After a week or two the
smell went away.

That was when people had begun to feel really sorry for
her. People in our town, remembering how old lady Wyatt,
her great-aunt, had gone completely crazy at last, believed
that the Griersons held themselves a little too high for what
they really were. None of the young men were quite good
enough for Miss Emily and such. We had long thought of
them as a tableau, Miss Emily a slender figure in white in
the background, her father a spraddled silhouette in the
foreground, his back to her and clutching a horsewhip, the
two of them framed by the back-flung front door. So when
she got to be thirty and was still single, we were not pleased
exactly, but vindicated; even with insanity in the family
she wouldn't have turned down all of her chances if they
had really materialized.

When her father died, it got about that the house was
all that was left to her; and in a way, people were glad. At
last they could pity Miss Emily. Being left alone, and a
pauper, she had become humanized. Now she too would
know the old thrill and the old despair of a penny more or
less.

The day after his death all the ladies prepared to call at
the house and offer condolence and aid, as is our custom.
Miss Emily met them at the door, dressed as usual and with
no trace of grief on her face. She told them that her father
was not dead. She did that for three days, with the ministers

124 The Village

calling on her, and the doctors, trying to persuade her to
let them dispose of the body. Just as they were about to
resort to law and force, she broke down, and they buried
her father quickly.

We did not say she was crazy then. We believed she had
to do that. We remembered all the young men her father
had driven away, and we knew that with nothing left, she
would have to cling to that which had robbed her, as people
will.

Ill

SHE WAS SICK for a long time. When we saw her again, her
hair was cut short, making her look like a girl, with a vague
resemblance to those angels in colored church windows —
sort of tragic and serene.

The town had just let the contracts for paving the side-
walks, and in the summer after her father's death they began
the work. The construction company came with niggers and
mules and machinery, and a foreman named Homer Barron,
a Yankee — a big, dark, ready man, with a big voice and eyes
lighter than his face. The little boys would follow in groups
to hear him cuss the niggers, and the niggers singing in time
to the rise and fall of picks. Pretty soon he knew every-
body in town. Whenever you heard a lot of laughing any-
where about the square, Homer Barron would be in the
center of the group. Presently we began to see him and Miss
Emily on Sunday afternoons driving in the yellow-wheeled
buggy and the matched team of bays from the livery stable.

At first we were glad that Miss Emily would have an
interest, because the ladies all said, "Of course a Grierson
would not think seriously of a Northerner, a day laborer.'*
But there were still others, older people, who said that even
grief could not cause a real lady to forget noblesse oblige — •

A Rose for Emily 125

without calling it noblesse oblige. They just said, "Poor
Emily. Her kinsfolk should come to her." She had some kin
in Alabama; but years ago her father had fallen out with
them over the estate of old lady Wyatt, the crazy woman,
and there was no communication between the two families.
They had not even been represented at the funeral.

And as soon as the old people said, "Poor Emily," the
whispering began. "Do you suppose it's really so?" they said
to one another. "Of course it is. What else could . . ." This
behind their hands; rustling of craned silk and satin behind
jalousies closed upon the sun of Sunday afternoon as the
thin, swift clop-clop-clop of the matched team passed: "Poor
Emily."

She carried her head high enough — even when we believed
that she was fallen. It was as if she demanded more than ever
the recognition of her dignity as the last Grierson; as if it
had wanted that touch of earthiness to reaffirm her imper-
viousness. Like when she bought the rat poison, the arsenic.
That was over a year after they had begun to say "Poor
Emily," and while the two female cousins were visiting her.

"I want some poison," she said to the druggist. She was
over thirty then, still a slight woman, though thinner than
usual, with cold, haughty black eyes in a face the flesh of
which was strained across the temples and about the eye-
sockets as you imagine a lighthouse-keeper's face ought to
look. "I want some poison," she said.

"Yes, Miss Emily. What kind? For rats and such? I'd
recom — "

"I want the best you have. I don't care what kind."

The druggist named several. "They'll kill anything up
to an elephant. But what you want is — "

"Arsenic," Miss Emily said. "Is that a good one?"

"Is . . . arsenic? Yes, ma'am. But what you want — "

"I want arsenic."

The Village

The druggist looked down at her. She looked back at him,
erect, her face like a strained flag. "Why, of course," the
druggist said. "If that's what you want. But the law requires
you to tell what you are going to use it for."

Miss Emily just stared at him, her head tilted back in
order to look him eye for eye, until he looked away and
went and got the arsenic and wrapped it up. The Negro
delivery boy brought her the package; the druggist didn't
come back. When she opened the package at home there
was written on the box, under the skull and bones: "For
rats."

IV

So THE NEXT day we all said, "She will kill herself"; and we
said it would be the best thing. When she had first begun
to be seen with Homer Barron, we had said, "She will marry
him." Then we said, "She will persuade him yet," because
Homer himself had remarked — he liked men, and it was
known that he drank with the younger men in the Elks'
Club — that he was not a marrying man. Later we said,
"Poor Emily" behind the jalousies as they passed on Sunday
afternoon in the glittering buggy, Miss Emily with her head
high and Homer Barron with his hat cocked and a cigar in
his teeth, reins and whip in a yellow glove.

Then some of the ladies began to say that it was a disgrace
to the town and a bad example to the young people. The
men did not want to interfere, but at last the ladies forced
the Baptist minister — Miss Emily's people were Episcopal —
to call upon her. He would never divulge what happened
during that interview, but he refused to go back again. The
next Sunday they again drove about the streets, and the
following day the minister's wife wrote to Miss Emily's
relations in Alabama.

A Rose for Emily 127

So she had blood-kin under her roof again and we sat
back to watch developments. At first nothing happened.
Then we were sure that they were to be married. We learned
that Miss Emily had been to the jeweler's and ordered a
man's toilet set in silver, with the letters H. B. on each piece.
Two days later we learned that she had bought a complete
outfit of men's clothing, including a nightshirt, and we said,
"They are married." We were really glad. We were glad
because the two female cousins were even more Grierson
than Miss Emily had ever been.

So we were not surprised when Homer Barron — the
streets had been finished some time since — was gone. We
were a little disappointed that there was not a public blow-
ing-off , bur we believed that he had gone on to prepare for
Miss Emily's coming, or to give her a chance to get rid of
the cousins. (By that time it was a cabal, and we were all
Miss Emily's allies to help circumvent the cousins.) Sure
enough, after another week they departed. And, as we had
expected all along, within three days Homer Barron was
back in town. A neighbor saw the Negro man admit him at
the kitchen door at dusk one evening.

And that was the last we saw of Homer Barron. And of
Miss Emily for some time. The Negro man went in and out
with the market basket, but the front door remained closed.
Now and then we would see her at a window for a moment,
as the men did that night when they sprinkled the lime, but
for almost six months she did not appear on the streets. Then
we knew that this was to be expected too; as if that quality
of her father which had thwarted her woman's life so many
times had been too virulent and too furious to die.

When we next saw Miss Emily, she had grown fat and
her hair was turning gray. During the next few years it
grew grayer and grayer until it attained an even pepper-and-
salt iron-gray, when it ceased turning. Up to the dav of her

ii8 The Village

death at seventy-four it was still that vigorous iron-gray,
like the hair of an active man.

From that time on her front door remained closed, save
for a period of six or seven years, when she was about forty,
during which she gave lessons in china-painting. She fitted
up a studio in one of the downstairs rooms, where the
daughters and granddaughters of Colonel Sartoris' contem-
poraries were sent to her with the same regularity and in the
same spirit that they were sent to church on Sundays with
a twenty-five-cent piece for the collection plate. Meanwhile
her taxes had been remitted.

Then the newer generation became the backbone and
the spirit of the town, and the painting pupils grew up and
fell away and did not send their children to her with boxes
of color and tedious brushes and pictures cut from the
ladies' magazines. The front door closed upon the last one
and remained closed for good. When the town got free
postal delivery, Miss Emily alone refused to let them fasten
the metal numbers above her door and attach a mailbox to
it. She would not listen to them.

Daily, monthly, yearly we watched the Negro grow grayer
and more stooped, going in and out with the market basket
Each December we sent her a tax notice, which would be
returned by the post office a week later, unclaimed. Now and
then we would see her in one of the downstairs windows —
she had evidently shut up the top floor of the house — like
the carven torso of an idol in a niche, looking or not looking
at us, we could never tell which. Thus she passed from gen-
eration to generation — dear, inescapable, impervious, tran-
quil, and perverse.

And so she died. Fell ill in the house filled with dust and
shadows, with only a doddering Negro man to wait on her.
We did not even know she was sick; we had long since
given up trying to get any information from the Negro

A Rose for Emily 129

He talked to no one, probably not even to her, for his voice
had grown harsh and rusty, as if from disuse.

She died in one of the downstairs rooms, in a heavy
walnut bed with a curtain, her gray head propped on a pillow
yellow and moldy with age and lack of sunlight.

V

THE NEGRO met the first of the ladies at the front door and
let them in, with their hushed, sibilant voices and their quick,
curious glances, and then he disappeared. He walked right
through the house and out the back and was not seen again.

The two female cousins came at once. They held the
funeral on the second day, with the town coming to look
at Miss Emily beneath a mass of bought flowers, with the
crayon face of her father musing profoundly above the bier
and the ladies sibilant and macabre; and the very old men
— some in their brushed Confederate uniforms — on the porch
and the lawn, talking of Miss Emily as if she had been a con-
temporary of theirs, believing that they had danced with
her and courted her perhaps, confusing time with its math-
ematical progression, as the old do, to whom all the past is
not a diminishing road but, instead, a huge meadow which
no winter ever quite touches, divided from them now by the
narrow bottle-neck of the most recent decade of years.

Already we knew that there was one room in that region
above stairs which no one had seen in forty years, and which
would have to be forced. They waited until Miss Emily
was decently in the ground before they opened it.

The violence of breaking down the door seemed to fill
this room with pervading dust. A thin, acrid pall as of the
tomb seemed to lie everywhere upon this room decked and
furnished as for a bridal: upon the valance curtains of faded
rose color, upon the rose-shaded lights, upon the dressing

130 The Village

table, upon the delicate array of crystal and the man's toilet
things backed with tarnished silver, silver so tarnished that
the monogram was obscured. Among them lay a collar and
tie, as if they had just been removed, which, lifted, left upon
the surface a pale crescent in the dust. Upon a chair hung
the suit, carefully folded; beneath it the two mute shoes
and the discarded socks.

The man himself lay in the bed.

For a long while we just stood there, looking down at the
profound and fleshless grin. The body had apparently once
lain in the attitude of an embrace, but now the long sleep
that outlasts love, that conquers even the grimace of love,
had cuckolded him. What was left of him, rotted beneath
what was left of the nightshirt, had become inextricable
from the bed in which he lay; and upon him and upon the
pillow beside him lay that even coating of the patient and
biding dust.

Then we noticed that in the second pillow was the inden-
tation of a head. One of us lifted something from it, and
leaning forward, that faint and invisible dust dry and acrid
in the nostrils, we saw a long strand of iron-gray hair.

Hair

THIS GIRL, this Susan Reed, was an orphan. She lived with
a family named Burchett, that had some more children, two
or three more. Some said that Susan was a niece or a cousin
or something; others cast the usual aspersions on the char-
acter of Burchett and even of Mrs. Burchett: you know.
Women mostly, these were.

She was about five when Hawkshaw first came to town.
It was his first summer behind that chair in Maxey's barber
shop that Mrs Burchett brought Susan in for the first time.
Maxey told me about how him and the other barbers watched
Mrs Burchett trying for three days to get Susan (she was
a thin little girl then, with big scared eyes and this straight,
soft hair not blonde and not brunette) into the shop. And
Maxey told how at last it was Hawkshaw that went out
into the street and worked with the girl for about fifteen
minutes until he got her into the shop and into his chair —
him that hadn't never said more than Yes or No to any man
or woman in the town that anybody ever saw. "Be durn if
it didn't look like Hawkshaw had been waiting for her to
come along," Maxey told me.

That was her first haircut. Hawkshaw gave it to her, and
her sitting there under the cloth like a little scared rabbit.
But six months after that she was coming to the shop by

132 The Village

herself and letting Hawkshaw cut her hair, still looking like
a little old rabbit, with her scared face and those big eyes
and that hair without any special name showing above the
cloth. If Hawkshaw was busy, Maxey said she would come
in and sit on the waiting bench close to his chair with her
legs sticking straight out in front of her until Hawkshaw
got done. Maxey says they considered her Hawkshaw's client
the same as if she had been a Saturday night shaving cus-
tomer. He says that one time the other barber, Matt Fox,
offered to wait on her, Hawkshaw being busy, and that
Hawkshaw looked up like a flash. "I'll be done in a minute,"
he says. "Pll tend to her." Maxey told me that Hawkshaw
had been working for him for almost a year then, but that
was the first time he ever heard him speak positive about
anything.

That fall the girl started to school. She would pass the
barber shop each morning and afternoon. She was still shy,
walking fast like little girls do, with that yellow-brown head
of hers passing the window level and fast like she was on
skates. She was always by herself at first, but pretty soon
her head would be one of a clump of other heads, all talking,
not looking toward the window at all, and Hawkshaw stand-
ing there in the window, looking out. Maxey said him and
Matt would not have to look at the clock at all to tell when
five minutes to eight and to three o'clock came, because they
could tell by Hawkshaw. It was like he would kind of drift
up to the window without watching himself do it, and be
looking out about the time for the school children to begin
to pass. When she would come to the shop for a haircut,
Hawkshaw would give her two or three of those pepper-
mints where he would give the other children just one,
Maxey told me.

No; it was Matt Fox, the other barber, told me that. He
was the one who told me about the doll Hawkshaw gave her

Hair 1 3 3

on Christmas. I don't know how he found it out. Hawkshaw
never told him. But he knew some way; he knew more about
Hawkshaw than Maxey did. He was a married man himself,
Matt was. A kind of fat, flabby fellow, with a pasty face
and eyes that looked tired or sad — something. A funny
fellow, and almost as good a barber as Hawkshaw. He never
talked much either, and I don't know how he could have
known so much about Hawkshaw when a talking man
couldn't get much out of him. I guess maybe a talking man
hasn't got the time to ever learn much about anything except
words.

Anyway, Matt told me about how Hawkshaw gave her
a present every Christmas, even after she got to be a big girl.
She still came to him, to his chair, and him watching her
every morning and afternoon when she passed to and from
school. A big girl, and she wasn't shy any more.

You wouldn't have thought she was the same girl. She
got grown fast. Too fast. That was the trouble. Some said it
was being an orphan and all. But it wasn't that. Girls are
different from boys. Girls are born weaned and boys don't
ever get weaned. You see one sixty years old, and be damned
if he won't go back to the perambulator at the bat of an eye.

It's not that she was bad. There's not any such thing as a
woman born bad, because they are all born bad, born with
the badness in them. The thing is, to get them married before
the badness comes to a natural head. But we try to make
them conform to a system that says a woman can't be mar-
ried until she reaches a certain age. And nature don't pay
any attention to systems, let alone women paying any atten-
tion to them, or to anything. She just grew up too fast. She
reached the point where the badness came to a head before
the system said it was time for her to. I think they can't help
it. I have a daughter of my own, and I say that.

So there she was. Matt told me they figured up and she

134 The Village

couldn't have been more than thirteen when Mrs Burchett
whipped her one day for using rouge and paint, and during
that year, he said, they would see her with two or three
other girls giggling and laughing on the street at all hours
when they should have been in school; still thin, with that
hair still not blonde and not brunette, with her face caked
with paint until you would have thought it would crack
like dried mud when she laughed, with the regular simple
gingham and such dresses that a thirteen-year-old child
ought to wear pulled and dragged to show off what she
never had yet to show off, like the older girls did with their
silk and crepe and such.

Matt said he watched her pass one day, when all of a
sudden he realized she never had any stockings on. He said
he thought about it and he said he could not remember that
she ever did wear stockings in the summer, until he realized
that what he had noticed was not the lack of stockings, but
that her legs were like a woman's legs: female. And her only
thirteen.

I say she couldn't help herself. It wasn't her fault. And
it wasn't Burchett's fault, either. Why, nobody can be as
gentle with them, the bad ones, the ones that are unlucky
enough to come to a head too soon, as men. Look at the
way they — all the men in town — treated Hawkshaw. Even
after folks knew, after all the talk began, there wasn't a man
of them talked before Hawkshaw. I reckon they thought
he knew too, had heard some of the talk, but whenever they
talked about her in the shop, it was while Hawkshaw was
not there. And I reckon the other men were the same, be-
cause there was not a one of them that hadn't seen Hawk-
shaw at the window, looking at her when she passed, or
looking at her on the street; happening to kind of be passing
the picture show when it let out and she would come out
with some fellow, having begun to go with them before she

Hair 135

was fourteen. Folks said how she would have to slip out and
meet them and slip back into the house again with Mrs
Burchett thinking she was at the home of a girl friend.

They never talked about her before Hawkshaw. They
would wait until he was gone, to dinner, or on one of those
two- weeks' vacations of his in April that never anybody
could find out about; where he went or anything. But he
would be gone, and they would watch the girl slipping
around, skirting trouble, bound to get into it sooner or later,
even if Burchett didn't hear something first. She had quit
school a year ago. For a year Burchett and Mrs Burchett
thought that she was going to school every day, when she
hadn't been inside the building even. Somebody — one of the
high-school boys maybe, but she never drew any lines:
schoolboys, married men, anybody — would get her a report
card every month and she would fill it out herself and take
it home for Mrs Burchett to sign. It beats the devil how the
folks that love a woman will let her fool them.

So she quit school and went to work in the ten-cent store.
She would come to the shop for a haircut, all painted up,
in some kind of little flimsy off-color clothes that showed
her off, with her face watchful and bold and discreet all at
once, and her hair gummed and twisted about her face. But
even the stuff she put on it couldn't change that brown-
yellow color. Her hair hadn't changed at all. She wouldn't
always go to Hawkshaw's chair. Even when his chair was
empty, she would sometimes take one of the others, talking
to the barbers, filling the whole shop with noise and perfume
and her legs sticking out from under the cloth. Hawkshaw
wouldn't look at her then. Even when he wasn't busy, he
had a way of looking the same: intent and down-looking
like he was making out to be busy, hiding behind the mak-
ing-out.

That was how it was when he left two weeks ago on that

136 The Village

April vacation of his, that secret trip that folks had given up
trying to find where he went ten years ago. I made Jefferson
a couple of days after he left, and I was in the shop. They
were talking about him and her.

"Is he still giving her Christmas presents?" I said.

"He bought her a wrist watch two years ago," Matt Fox
said. "Paid sixty dollars for it."

Maxey was shaving a customer. He stopped, the razor in
his hand, the blade loaded with lather. "Well, I'll be durned,"
he said. "Then he must — You reckon he was the first one,
the one that — "

Matt hadn't looked around. "He aint give it to her yet,"
he said.

"Well, durn his tight-fisted time," Maxey said. "Any old
man that will fool with a young girl, he's pretty bad. But a
fellow that will trick one and then not even pay her noth-
ing-"

Matt looked around now; he was shaving a customer too.
"What would you say if you heard that the reason he aint
give it to her is that he thinks she is too young to receive
jewelry from anybody that aint kin to her?"

"You mean, he dont know? He dont know what every-
body else in this town except maybe Mr and Mrs Burchett
has knowed for three years?"

Matt went back to work again, his elbow moving steady,
the razor moving in little jerks. "How would he know?
Aint anybody but a woman going to tell him. And he dont
know any women except Mrs Cowan. And I reckon she
thinks he's done heard."

"That's a fact," Maxey says.

That was how things were when he went off on his vaca-
tion two weeks ago. I worked Jefferson in a day and a half,
and went on. In the middle of the next week I reached

Hair 137

Division. I didn't hurry. I wanted to give him time. It was
on a Wednesday morning I got there.

II

IF THERE HAD BEEN love once, a man would have said that
Hawkshaw had forgotten her. Meaning love, of course.
When I first saw him thirteen years ago (I had just gone on
the road then, making North Mississippi and Alabama with
a line of work shirts and overalls) behind a chair in the
barber shop in Porterfield, I said, "Here is a bachelor born.
Here is a man who was born single and forty years old."

A little, sandy-complected man with a face you would
not remember and would not recognize again ten minutes
later, in a blue serge suit and a black bow tie, the kind that
snaps together in the back, that you buy already tied in the
store. Maxey told me he was still wearing that serge suit and
tie when he got off the south-bound train in Jefferson a
year later, carrying one of these imitation leather suitcases.
And when I saw him again in Jefferson in the next year,
behind a chair in Maxey 's shop, if it had not been for the
chair I wouldn't have recognized him at all. Same face, same
tie; be damned if it wasn't like they had picked him up,
chair, customer and all, and set him down sixty miles away
without him missing a lick. I had to look back out the win-
dow at the square to be sure I wasn't in Porterfield myself
any time a year ago. And that was the first time I realized
that when I had made Porterfield about six weeks back, he
had not been there.

It was three years after that before I found out about him.
I would make Division about five times a year — a store and
four or five houses and a sawmill on the State line between
Mississippi and Alabama. I had noticed a house there. It was
a good house, one of the best there, and it was always closed.

138 The Village

When I would make Division in the late spring or the early
summer there would always be signs of work around the
house. The yard would be cleaned up of weeds, and the
flower beds tended to and the fences and roof fixed. Then
when I would get back to Division along in the fall or the
winter, the yard would be grown up in weeds again, and
maybe some of the pickets gone off the fence where folks
had pulled them off to mend their own fences or maybe for
firewood; I dont know. And the house would be always
closed; never any smoke at the kitchen chimney. So one day
I asked the storekeeper about it and he told me.

It had belonged to a man named Starnes, but the family
was all dead. They were considered the best folks, because
they owned some land, mortgaged. Starnes was one of these
lazy men that was satisfied to be a landowner as long as he
had enough to eat and a little tobacco. They had one daugh-
ter that went and got herself engaged to a young fellow,
son of a tenant farmer. The mother didn't like the idea, but
Starnes didn't seem to object. Maybe because the young
fellow (his name was Stribling) was a hard worker; maybe
because Starnes was just too lazy to object. Anyway, they
were engaged and Stribling saved his money and went to
Birmingham to learn barbering. Rode part of the way in
wagons and walked the rest, coming back each summer to
see the girl.

Then one day Starnes died, sitting in his chair on the
porch; they said that he was too lazy to keep on breathing,
and they sent for Stribling. I heard he had built up a good
trade of his own in the Birmingham shop, saving his money;
they told me he had done picked out the apartment and
paid down on the furniture and all, and that they were to be
married that summer. He came back. All Starnes had ever
raised was a mortgage, so Stribling paid for the burial. It
cost a right smart, more than Starnes was worth, but Mrs

Hair 139

Starnes had to be suited. So Stribling had to start saving
again.

But he had already leased the apartment and paid down
on the furniture and the ring and he had bought the wedding
license when they sent for him again in a hurry. It was the
girl this time. She had some kind of fever. These backwoods
folks: you know how it is. No doctors, or veterinaries, if
they are. Cut them and shoot them: that's all right. But let
them get a bad cold and maybe they'll get well or maybe
they'll die two days later of cholera. She was delirious when
Stribling got there. They had to cut all her hair off. Strib-
ling did that, being an expert you might say; a professional
in the family. They told me she was one of these thin, un-
healthy girls anyway, with a lot of straight hair not brown
and not yellow.

She never knew him, never knew who cut off her hair.
She died so, without knowing anything about it, without
knowing even that she died, maybe. She just kept on saying,
"Take care of maw. The mortgage. Paw wont like it to be
left so. Send for Henry (That was him: Henry Stribling;
Hawkshaw: I saw him the next year in Jefferson. "So you're
Henry Stribling," I said). The mortgage. Take care of maw.
Send for Henry. The mortgage. Send for Henry." Then
she died. There was a picture of her, the only one they had.
Hawkshaw sent it, with a lock of the hair he had cut off, to
an address in a farm magazine, to have the hair made into
a frame for the picture. But they both got lost, the hair and
the picture, in the mail somehow. Anyway he never got
either of them back.

He buried the girl too, and the next year (he had to go
back to Birmingham and get shut of the apartment which he
had engaged and let the furniture go so he could save again)
he put a headstone over her grave. Then he went away
again and they heard how he had quit the Birmingham shop.

140 The Village

He just quit and disappeared, and they all saying how in
time he would have owned the shop. But he quit, and next
April, just before the anniversary of the girl's death, he
showed up again. He came to see Mrs Starnes and went
away again in two weeks.

After he was gone they found out how he had stopped
at the bank at the county seat and paid the interest on the
mortgage. He did that every year until Mrs Starnes died.
She happened to die while he was there. He would spend
about two weeks cleaning up the place and fixing it so she
would be comfortable for another year, and she letting him,
being as she was better born than him; being as he was one
of these parveynoos. Then she died too. "You know what
Sophie said to do," she says. "That mortgage. Mr Starnes
will be worried when I see him."

So he buried her too. He bought another headstone, to
suit her. Then he begun to pay the principal on the mort-
gage. Starnes had some kin in Alabama. The folks in Divi-
sion expected the kin to come and claim the place. But maybe
the kin were waiting until Hawkshaw had got the mortgage
cleared. He made the payment each year, coming back and
cleaning up the place. They said he would clean up that
house inside like a woman, washing and scrubbing it. It
would take him two weeks each April. Then he would go
away again, nobody knew where, returning each April to
make the payment at the bank and clean up that empty
house that never belonged to him.

He had been doing that for about five years when I saw
him in Maxey's shop in Jefferson, the year after I saw him
in a shop in Porterfield, in that serge suit and that black
bow tie. Maxey said he had them on when he got off the
south-bound train that day in Jefferson, carrying that paper
suitcase. Maxey said they watched him for two days about
the square, him not seeming to know anybody or to have

Hair 141

any business or to be in any hurry; just walking about the
square like he was just looking around.

It was the young fellows, the loafers that pitch dollars all
day long in the clubhouse yard, waiting for the young girls
to come giggling down to the post office and the soda foun-
tain in the late afternoon, working their hips under their
dresses, leaving the smell of perfume when they pass, that
gave him his name. They said he was a detective, maybe
because that was the last thing in the world anybody would
suspect him to be. So they named him Hawkshaw, and
Hawkshaw he remained for the twelve years he stayed in
Jefferson, behind that chair in Maxey's shop. He told Maxey
he was from Alabama.

"What part?" Maxey said. "Alabama's a big place.
Birmingham?" Maxey said, because Hawkshaw looked like
he might have come from almost anywhere in Alabama
except Birmingham.

"Yes," Hawkshaw said. "Birmingham."

And that was all they ever got out of him until I hap-
pened to notice him behind the chair and to remember him
back in Porterfield.

"Porterfield?" Maxey said. "My brother-in-law owns that
shop. You mean you worked in Porterfield last year?"

"Yes," Hawkshaw said. "I was there."

Maxey told me about the vacation business. How Hawk-
shaw wouldn't take his summer vacation; said he wanted
two weeks in April instead. He wouldn't tell why. Maxey
said April was too busy for vacations, and Hawkshaw
offered to work until then, and quit. "Do you want to quit
then?" Maxey said that was in the summer, after Mrs
Burchett had brought Susan Reed to the shop for the first
time.

"No," Hawkshaw said. "I like it here. I just want two
weeks off in April."

142 The Village

"On business?" Maxey said.

"On business," Hawkshaw said.

When Maxey took his vacation, he went to Porterfield to
visit his brother-in-law; maybe shaving his brother-in-law's
customers, like a sailor will spend his vacation in a rowboat
on an artificial lake. The brother-in-law told him Hawkshaw
had worked in his shop, would not take a vacation until
April, went off and never came back. "He'll quit you the
same way," the brother-in-law said. "He worked in a shop
in Bolivar, Tennessee, and in one in Florence, Alabama, for
a year and quit the same way. He wont come back. You
watch and see."

Maxey said he came back home and he finally got it out
of Hawkshaw how he had worked for a year each in six or
eight different towns in Alabama and Tennessee and Missis-
sippi. "Why did you quit them?" Maxey said. "You are a
good barber; one of the best children's barbers I ever saw.
Why did you quit?"

"I was just looking around," Hawkshaw said.

Then April came, and he took his two weeks. He shaved
himself and packed up that paper suitcase and took the
north-bound train.

"Going on a visit, I reckon," Maxey said.

"Up the road a piece," Hawkshaw said.

So he went away, in that serge suit and black bow tie.
Maxey told me how, two days later, it got out how Hawk-
shaw had drawn from the bank his year's savings. He
boarded at Mrs Cowan's and he had joined the church and
he spent no money at all. He didn't even smoke. So Maxey
and Matt and I reckon everybody else in Jefferson thought
that he had saved up steam for a year and was now bound
on one of these private sabbaticals among the fleshpots of
Memphis. Mitch Ewing, the depot freight agent, lived at
Mrs Cowan's too. He told how Hawkshaw had bought his

Hair 143

ticket only to the junction-point. "From there he can go to
either Memphis or Birmingham or New Orleans," Mitch
said.

"Well, he's gone, anyway," Maxey said. "And mark my
words, that's the last you'll see of that fellow in this town."

And that's what everybody thought until two weeks later.
On the fifteenth day Hawkshaw came walking into the shop
at his regular time, like he hadn't even been out of town,
and took off his coat and begun to hone his razors. He never
told anybody where he had been. Just up the road a piece.

Sometimes I thought I would tell them. I would make
Jefferson and find him there behind that chair. He didn't
change, grow any older in the face, any more than that Reed
girl's hair changed, for all the gum and dye she put on it.
But there he would be, back from his vacation "up the road
a piece," saving his money for another year, going to church
on Sunday, keeping that sack of peppermints for the children
that came to him to be barbered, until it was time to take
that paper suitcase and his year's savings and go back to
Division to pay on the mortgage and clean up the house.

Sometimes he would be gone when I got to Jefferson, and
Maxey would tell me about him cutting that Reed girl's
hair, snipping and snipping it and holding the mirror up for
her to see like she was an actress. "He dont charge her,"
Matt Fox said. "He pays the quarter into the register out of
his own pocket."

"Well, that's his business," Maxey said. "All I want is the
quarter. I dont care where it comes from."

Five years later maybe I would have said, "Maybe that's
her price." Because she got in trouble at last. Or so they
said. I dont know, except that most of the talk about girls,
women, is envy or retaliation by the ones that dont dare to
and the ones that failed to. But while he was gone one April

144 The Village

they were whispering how she had got in trouble at last
and had tried to doctor herself with turpentine and was bad
sick.

Anyhow, she was off the streets for about three months;
some said in a hospital in Memphis, and when she came into
the shop again she took Matt's chair, though Hawkshaw's
was empty at the time, like she had already done before to
devil him, maybe. Maxey said she looked like a painted
ghost, gaunt and hard, for all her bright dress and such,
sitting there in Matt's chair, filling the whole shop with her
talking and her laughing and her perfume and her long,
naked-looking legs, and Hawkshaw making out he was busy
at his empty chair.

Sometimes I thought I would tell them. But I never told
anybody except Gavin Stevens. He is the district attorney,
a smart man: not like the usual pedagogue lawyer and office
holder. He went to Harvard, and when my health broke
down (I used to be a bookkeeper in a Gordonville bank and
my health broke down and I met Stevens on a Memphis
train when I was coming home from the hospital) it was
him that suggested I try the road and got me my position
with this company. I told him about it two years ago. "And
now the girl has gone bad on him, and he's too old to hunt
up another one and raise her," I said. "And some day he'll
have the place paid out and those Alabama Starnes can come
and take it, and he'll be through. Then what do you think
he will do?"

"I dont know," Stevens said.

"Maybe he'll just go off and die," I said.

"Maybe he will," Stevens said.

"Well," I said, "he wont be the first man to tilt at wind-
mills."

"He wont be the first man to die, either," Stevens said.

Hair 145

III

So LAST WEEK I went on to Division. I got there on a
Wednesday. When I saw the house, it had just been painted.
The storekeeper told me that the payment Hawkshaw had
made was the last one; that Starnes' mortgage was clear.
"Them Alabama Starnes can come and take it now," he said.

"Anyway, Hawkshaw did what he promised her, prom-
ised Mrs Starnes," I said.

"Hawkshaw?" he said. "Is that what they call him? Well,
I'll be durned. Hawkshaw. Well, I'll be durned."

It was three months before I made Jefferson again. When
I passed the barber shop I looked in without stopping. And
there was another fellow behind Hawkshaw's chair, a young
fellow. "I wonder if Hawk left his sack of peppermints," I
said to myself. But I didn't stop. I just thought, 'Well, he's
gone at last/ wondering just where he would be when old
age got him and he couldn't move again; if he would prob-
ably die behind a chair somewhere in a little three-chair
country shop, in his shirt sleeves and that black tie and those
serge pants.

I went on and saw my customers and had dinner, and in
the afternoon I went to Stevens' office. "I see you've got a
new barber in town," I said.

"Yes," Stevens said. He looked at me a while, then he said,
"You haven't heard?"

"Heard what?" I said. Then he quit looking at me.

"I got your letter," he said, "that Hawkshaw had paid off
the mortgage and painted the house. Tell me about it."

So I told him how I got to Division the day after Hawk-
shaw had left. They were talking about him on the porch
of the store, wondering just when those Alabama Starnes
would come in. He had painted the house himself, and he
had cleaned up the two graves; I dont reckon he wanted to

146 The Village

disturb Starnes by cleaning his. I went up to see them. He
had even scrubbed the headstones, and he had set out an
apple shoot over the girl's grave. It was in bloom, and what
with the folks all talking about him, I got curious too, to
see the inside of that house. The storekeeper had the key,
and he said he reckoned it would be all right with Hawk-
shaw.

It was clean inside as a hospital. The stove was polished
and the woodbox filled. The storekeeper told me Hawkshaw
did that every year, filled the woodbox before he left.
"Those Alabama kinsfolk will appreciate that," I said. We
went on back to the parlor. There was a melodeon in the
corner, and a lamp and a Bible on the table. The lamp was
clean, the bowl empty and clean too; you couldn't even
smell oil on it. That wedding license was framed, hanging
above the mantel like a picture. It was dated April 4, 1905.

"Here's where he keeps that mortgage record," the store-
keeper (his name is Bidwell) said. He went to the table and
opened the Bible. The front page was the births and deaths,
two columns. The girl's name was Sophie. I found her name
in the birth column, and on the death side it was next to the
last one. Mrs Starnes had written it. It looked like it might
have taken her ten minutes to write it down. It looked like
this:

Sofy starnes Dide april 16 th 1905

Hawkshaw wrote the last one himself; it was neat and
well written, like a bookkeeper's hand:

Mrs Will Starnes. April 23, 1916.

"The record will be in the back," Bidwell said.

We turned to the back. It was there, in a neat column, in
Hawkshaw's hand. It began with April 16, 1917, $200.00.
The next one was when he made the next payment at the

Hair 147

bank: April 16, 1918, $200.00; and April 16, 1919, $200.00;
and April 16, 1920, $200.00; and on to the last one: April
1 6, 1930, $200.00. Then he had totaled the column and
written under it:

"Paid in full. April 16, 1930."

It looked like a sentence written in a copy book in the old-
time business colleges, like it had flourished, the pen had, in
spite of him. It didn't look like it was written boastful; it
just flourished somehow, the end of it, like it had run out
of the pen somehow before he could stop it.

"So he did what he promised her he would," Stevens said.

"That's what I told Bidwell," I said.

Stevens went on like he wasn't listening to me much.

"So the old lady could rest quiet. I guess that's what the
pen was trying to say when it ran away from him: that
now she could lie quiet. And he's not much over forty-five.
Not so much anyway. Not so much but what, when he wrote
'Paid in full' under that column, time and despair rushed as
slow and dark under him as under any garlanded boy or
crownless and crestless girl."

"Only the girl went bad on him," I said. "Forty-five's
pretty late to set out to find another. He'll be fifty-five at
least by then."

Stevens looked at me then. "I didn't think you had heard,"
he said.

"Yes," I said. "That is, I looked in the barber shop when
I passed. But I knew he would be gone. I knew all the time
he would move on, once he had that mortgage cleared.
Maybe he never knew about the girl, anyway. Or likely he
knew and didn't care."

"You think he didn't know about her?"

"I dont see how he could have helped it. But I dont know.
What do you think?"

148 The Village

"I dont know. I dont think I want to know. I know some-
thing so much better than that."

"What's that?" I said. He was looking at me. "You keep
on telling me I haven't heard the news. What is it I haven't
heard?"

"About the girl," Stevens said. He looked at me.

"On the night Hawkshaw came back from his last vaca-
tion, they were married. He took her with him this time."

Centaur in Brass

IN OUR TOWN Flem Snopes now has a monument to himselfv
a monument of brass, none the less enduring for the fact that,
though it is constantly in sight of the whole town and visible
from three or four points miles out in the country, only four
people, two white men and two Negroes, know that it is his
monument, or that it is a monument at all.

He came to Jefferson from the country, accompanied by
his wife and infant daughter and preceded by a reputation for
shrewd and secret dealing. There lives in our county a sew-
ing-machine agent riamed Suratt, who used to own a half
interest in a small back-street restaurant in town — himself
no mean hand at that technically unassailable opportunism
which passes with country folks — and town folks, too — for
honest shrewdness.

He travels about the county steadily and constantly, and
it was through him that Snope's doings first came to our ears:
how first, a clerk in a country store, Snopes one day and to
everyone's astonishment was married to the store owner's
daughter, a young girl who was the belle of the countryside.
They were married suddenly, on the same day upon which
three of the girl's erstwhile suitors left the county and were
seen no more.

Soon after the wedding Snopes and his wife moved to
Texas, from where the wif e returned a year later with a well-

149

150 The Village

grown baby. A month later Snopes himself returned, ac-
companied by a broad-hatted stranger and a herd of half-
wild mustang ponies, which the stranger auctioned off,
collected the money, and departed. Then the purchasers dis-
covered that none of the ponies had ever had a bridle on. But
they never learned if Snopes had had any part in the business,
or had received any part of the money.

The next we heard of him was when he appeared one day
in a wagon laden with his family and household goods, and
with a bill-of-sale for Suratt's half of the restaurant. How he
got the bill-of-sale, Suratt never told, and we never learned
more than that there was somehow involved in the affair a
worthless piece of land which had been a portion of Mrs.
Snopes's dowry. But what the business was even Suratt, a
humorous, talkative man who was as ready to laugh at a joke
on himself as at one on anyone else, never told. But when he
mentioned Snopes's name after that, it was in a tone of sav-
age and sardonic and ungrudging admiration.

"Yes, sir," he said, "Flem Snopes outsmarted me. And the
man that can do that, I just wish I was Jiim, with this whole
State of Mississippi to graze on."

In the restaurant business Snopes appeared to prosper.
That is, he soon eliminated his partner, and presently he was
out of the restaurant himself, with a hired manager to run it,
and we began to believe in the town that we knew what was
the mainspring of his rise and luck. We believed that it was
his wife; we accepted without demur the evil which such
little lost towns like ours seem to foist even upon men who
are of good thinking despite them. She helped in the restau-
rant at first. We could see her there behind the wooden
counter worn glass-smooth by elbows in their eating genera-
tions: young, with the rich coloring of a calendar; a face
smooth, unblemished by any thought or by anything else:
an appeal immediate and profound and without calculation

Centaur in Brass 1 5 1

or shame, with (because of its unblemishment and not its
size) something of that vast, serene, impervious beauty of a
snowclad virgin mountain flank, listening and not smiling
while Major Hoxey, the town's lone rich middle-aged bach-
elor, graduate of Yale and soon to be mayor of the town, in-
congruous there among the collarless shirts and the overalls
and the grave, country-eating faces, sipped his coffee and
talked to her.

Not impregnable: impervious. That was why it did not
need gossip when we watched Snopes's career mount beyond
the restaurant and become complement with Major Hoxey 's
in city affairs, until less than six months after Hoxey's inau-
guration Snopes, who had probably never been close to any
piece of machinery save a grindstone until he moved to town,
was made superintendent of the municipal power plant. Mrs.
Snopes was born one of those women the deeds and fortunes
of whose husbands alone are the barometers of their good
name; for to do her justice, there was no other handle for
gossip save her husband's rise in Hoxey's administration.

But there was still that intangible thing: partly something
in her air, her face; partly what we had already heard about
Flem Snopes's methods. Or perhaps what we knew or be-
lieved about Snopes was all; perhaps what we thought to be
her shadow was merely his shadow falling upon her. But
anyway, when we saw Snopes and Hoxey together we would
think of them and of adultery in the same instant, and we
would think of the two of them walking and talking in ami-
cable cuckoldry. Perhaps, as I said, this was the fault of the
town. Certainly it was the fault of the town that the idea of
their being on amicable terms outraged us more than the idea
of the adultery itself. It seemed foreign, decadent, perverted:
we could have accepted, if not condoned, the adultery had
they only been natural and logical and enemies.

But they were not. Yet neither could they have been called

152 The Village

friends. Snopes had no friends; there was no man nor woman
among us, not even Hoxey or Mrs. Snopes, who we believed
could say, "I know his thought" — least of all, those among
whom we saw him now and then, sitting about the stove in
the rear of a certain smelly, third-rate grocery, listening and
not talking, for an hour or so two or three nights a week.
And so we believed that, whatever his wife was, she was not
fooling him. It was another woman who did that: a Negro
woman, the new young wife of Tom-Tom, the day fireman
in the power plant.

Tom-Tom was black: a big bull of a man weighing two
hundred pounds and sixty years old and looking about forty.
He had been married about a year to his third wife, a young
woman whom he kept with the strictness of a Turk in a
cabin two miles from town and from the power plant where
he spent twelve hours a day with shovel and bar.

One afternoon he had just finished cleaning the fires and
he was sitting in the coal-bunker, resting and smoking his
pipe, when Snopes, his superintendent, employer and boss,
came in. The fires were clean and the steam was up again,
and the safety valve on the middle boiler was blowing off.

Snopes entered: a potty man of no particular age, broad
and squat, in a clean though collarless white shirt and a plaid
cap. His face was round and smooth, either absolutely impen-
etrable or absolutely empty. His eyes were the color of stag-
nant water; his mouth was a tight, lipless seam. Chewing
steadily, he looked up at the whistling safety valve.

"How much does that whistle weigh?" he said after a time.

"Must weight ten pound, anyway," Tom-Tom said.

"Is it solid brass?"

"If it ain't, I ain't never seed no brass what is solid," Tom-
Tom said.

Snopes had not once looked at Tom-Tom. He continued
to look upward toward the thin, shrill, excruciating sound of
the valve. Then he spat, and turned and left the boiler-room.

Centaur in Brass 153

II

HE BUILT HIS monument slowly. But then, it is always strange
to what involved and complex methods a man will resort in
order to steal something. It's as though there were some in-
tangible and invisible social force that mitigates against him,
confounding his own shrewdness with his own cunning, dis-
torting in his judgment the very value of the object of his
greed, which in all probability, had he but picked it up and
carried it openly away, nobody would have remarked or
cared. But then, that would not have suited Snopes, since he
apparently had neither the high vision of a confidence man
nor the unrecking courage of a brigand.

His vision at first, his aim, was not even that high; it was
no higher than that of a casual rramp who pauses in passing
to steal three eggs from beneath a setting hen. Or perhaps he
was merely not certain yet that there really was a market for
brass. Because his next move was five months after Harker,
the night engineer, came on duty one evening and found the
three safety whistles gone and the vents stopped with one-
inch steel screw plugs capable of a pressure of a thousand
pounds.

"And them three boiler heads you could poke a hole
through with a soda straw!" Harker said. "And that damn
black night fireman, Turl, that couldn't even read a clock
face, still throwing coal into them! When I looked at the
gauge on the first boiler, I never believed I would get to the
last boiler in time to even reach the injector.

"So when I finally got it into Turl's head that that 100 on
that dial meant where Turl would not only lose his job, he
would lose it so good they wouldn't even be able to find the
job to give it to the next misbegotten that believed that live
steam was something you blowed on a window pane in cold
weather, I got settled down enough to ask him where them
safety valves had gone to.

The

" 'Mr. Snopes took urn off,' Turl says.

"'What in the hell for?'

" 'I don't know. I just telling you what Tom-Tom told me.
He say Mr. Snopes say the shut-off float in the water tank
ain't heavy enough. Say that tank start leaking some day, and
so he going to fasten them three safety valves on the float
and make it heavier.'

" 'You mean — ' I says. That's as far as I could get: 'You
mean '

" 'That what Tom-Tom say. I don't know nothing about
it.'

"But they were gone. Up to that night, me and Turl had
been catching forty winks or so now and then when we got
caught up and things was quiet. But you can bet we never
slept none that night. Me and him spent that whole night,
time about, on that coal pile, where we could watch them
three gauges. And from midnight on, after the load went oflf ,
we never had enough steam in all three of them boilers put
together to run a peanut parcher. And even when I was in
bed, at home, I couldn't sleep. Time I shut my eyes I would
begin to see a steam gauge about the size of a washtub, with
a red needle big as a shovel moving up toward a hundred
pounds, and I would wake myself up hollering and
sweating."

But even that wore away after a while, and then Turl and
Harker were catching their forty winks or so again. Perhaps
they decided that Snopes had stolen his three eggs and was
done. Perhaps they decided that he had frightened himself
with the ease with which he had got the eggs. Because it was
five months before the next act took place.

Then one afternoon, with his fires cleaned and steam up
again, Tom-Tom, smoking his pipe on the coal pile, saw
Snopes enter, carrying in his hand an object which Tom-
Tom said later he thought was a mule shoe. He watched

Centaur in Brass 155

Snopes retire into a dim corner behind the boilers, where
there had accumulated a miscellaneous pile of metal junk, all
covered with dirt: fittings, valves, rods and bolts and such,
and, kneeling there, begin to sort the pieces, touching them
one by one with the mule shoe and from time to time remov-
ing one piece and tossing it behind him, into the runway.
Tom-Tom watched him try with the magnet every loose
piece of metal in the boiler-room, sorting out the iron from
the brass: then Snopes ordered Tom-Tom to gather up the
segregated pieces of brass and bring them in to his office.

Tom-Tom gathered the pieces into a box. Snopes was
waiting in the office. He glanced once into the box, then he
spat. "How do you and Turl get along?" he said. Turl, I had
better repeat, was the night fireman; a Negro too, though he
was saddle-colored where Tom-Tom was black, and in place
of Tom-Tom's two hundred pounds Turl, even with his
laden shovel, would hardly have tipped a hundred and fifty.

"I tends to my business," Tom-Tom said. "What Turl
does wid hisn ain't no trouble of mine."

"That ain't what Turl thinks," Snopes said, chewing,
watching Tom-Tom, who looked at Snopes as steadily in
turn; looked down at him. "Turl wants me to give him your
day shift. He says he's tired firing at night."

"Let him fire here long as I is, and he can have it," Tom-
Torn said.

"Turl don't want to wait that long," Snopes said, chewing,
watching Tom-Tom's face. Then he told Tom-Tom how
Turl was planning to steal some iron from the plant and lay
it at Tom-Tom's door and so get Tom-Tom fired. And
Tom-Tom stood there, huge, hulking, with his hard round
little head. "That's what he's up to," Snopes said. "So I want
you to take this stuff out to your house and hide it where
Turl can't find it. And as soon as I get enough evidence on
Turl, I'm going to fire him."

1 56 The Village

Tom-Tom waited until Snopes had finished, blinking his
eyes slowly. Then he said immediately: "I knows a better
way than that/'

"What way?" Snopes said. Tom-Tom didn't answer. He
stood, big, humorless, a little surly; quiet; more than a little
implacable though heatless. "No, no," Snopes said. "That
won't do. You have any trouble with Turl, and I'll fire you
both. You do like I say, unless you are tired of your job and
want Turl to have it. Are you tired of it?"

"Ain't no man complained about my pressure yet," Tom-
Tom said sullenly.

"Then you do like I say. Yovi take that stuff out home with
you tonight. Don't let nobody see you; not even your wife.
And if you don't want to do it, just say so. I reckon I can get
somebody that will do it."

And that's what Tom-Tom did. And he kept his own
counsel too, even when afterward, as discarded fittings and
such accumulated again, he would watch Snopes test them
one by one with the magnet and sort him out another batch
to take out home and hide. Because he had been firing those
boilers for forty years, ever since he was a man. At that time
there was but one boiler, and he had got twelve dollars a
month for firing it, but now there were three, and he got
sixty dollars a month; and now he was sixty, and he owned
his little cabin and a little piece of corn, and a mule and a
wagon in which he rode into town to church twice each Sun-
day, with his new young wife beside him and a gold watch
and chain.

And Marker didn't know then, either, even though he
would watch the junked metal accumulate in the corner and
then disappear over night until it came to be his nightly joke
to enter with his busy, bustling air and say to Turl: "Well,
Turl, I notice that little engine is still running. There's a right
smart of brass in them bushings and wrist pins, but I reckon

Centaur in Brass 157

it's moving too fast to hold that magnet against it." Then
more soberly; quite soberly, in fact, without humor or irony
at all, since there was some of Suratt in Harker too: "That
durn fellow! I reckon he'd sell the boilers too, if he knowed
of any way you and Tom-Tom could keep steam up without
them."

And Turl didn't answer. Because by that time Turl had
his own private temptations and worries, the same as Tom-
Tom, of which Harker was also unaware.

In the meantime, the first of the year came and the city
was audited.

"They come down here," Harker said, "two of them, in
glasses. They went over the books and they poked around
everywhere, counting everything in sight and writing it
down. Then they went back to the office and they was still
there at six o'clock when I come on. It seems that there was
something wrong; it seems like there was some old brass parts
wrote down in the books, only the brass seemed to be miss-
ing or something. It was on the books all right, and the new
valves and things it had been replaced with was there. But be
durn if they could find a one of them old pieces except one
busted bib that had got mislaid under the work-bench some-
way or other. It was right strange. So I went back with them
and held the light while they looked again in all the corners,
getting a right smart of soot and grease on them, but that
brass just naturally seemed to be plumb missing. So they
went away.

"And the next morning early they come back. They had
the city clerk with them this time and they beat Mr. Snopes
down here and so they had to wait till he come in in his check
cap and his chew, chewing and looking at them while they
told him. They was right sorry; they hemmed and hawed a
right smart, being sorry. But it wasn't nothing else they could
do except to come back on him, long as he was the superin-

158 The Village

tendent; and did he want me and Turl and Tom-Tom
arrested right now, or would tomorrow do? And him stand-
ing there, chewing, with them eyes like two gobs of cup
grease on a hunk of raw dough, and them still telling him
how sorry they was.

" 'How much does it come to?' he says.

" 'Three hundred and four dollars and fifty-two cents, Mr.
Snopes.'

" 'Is that the full amount?'

" 'We checked our figures twice, Mr. Snopes.'

" 'All right,' he says. And he reaches down and hauls out
the money and pays them the three hundred and four dollars
and fifty-two cents in cash, and asks for a receipt."

Ill

THEN THE NEXT Summer came, with Harker still laughing at
and enjoying what he saw, and seeing so little, thinking how
they were all fooling one another while he looked on, when
it was him who was being fooled. For in that Summer the
thing ripened, came to a head. Or maybe Snopes just decided
to cut his first hay crop; clean the meadow for reseeding. Be-
cause he could never have believed that on the day when he
sent for Turl, he had set the capital on his monument and
had started to tear the scaffolding down.

It was in the evening; he returned to the plant after supper
and sent for Turl; again two of them, white man and Negro,
faced one another in the office.

"What's this about you and Tom-Tom?" Snopes said.

" 'Bout me and which?" Turl said. "If Tom-Tom depend-
ing on me for his trouble, he sho' done quit being a fireman
and turned waiter. It take two folks to have trouble, and
Tom-Tom ain't but one, I don't care how big he is."

Centaur in Brass 159

Snopes watched Turl. "Tom-Tom thinks you want to fire
the day shift."

Turl looked down. He looked briefly at Snopes's face; at
the still eyes, the slow unceasing jaw, and down again. "I
can handle as much coal as Tom-Tom," he said.

Snopes watched him: the smooth, brown, aside-looking
face. "Tom-Tom knows that, too. He knows he's getting
old. But he knows there ain't nobody else can crowd him but
you." Then, watching Turl's face, Snopes told him how for
two years Tom-Tom had been stealing brass from the plant,
in order to lay it on Turl and get him fired; how only that
day Tom-Tom had told him that Turl was the thief.

Turl looked up. "That's a lie," he said. "Can't no nigger
accuse me of stealing when I ain't, I don't care how big he
is."

"Sho'," Snopes said. "So the thing to do is to get that brass
back."

"If Tom-Tom got it, I reckon Mr. Buck Conner the man
to get it back," Turl said. Buck Conner was the city marshal.

"Then you'll go to jail, sure enough. Tom-Tom'll say he
didn't know it was there. You'll be the only one that knew
it was there. So what you reckon Buck Conner'll think?
You'll be the one that knew where it was hid at, and Buck
Conner'll know that even a fool has got more sense than to
steal something and hide it in his corn-crib. The only thing
you can do is to get that brass back. Go out there in the
daytime, while Tom-Tom is at work, and get it and bring it
to me and I'll put it away somewhere to use as evidence on
Tom-Tom. Unless maybe you don't want that day shift. Just
say so, if you don't. I reckon I can find somebody else that
does."

And Turl agreed to do that. He hadn't fired any boilers
for forty years. He hadn't done anything at all for as long as
forty years, since he was just past thirty. But even if he v/ere

160 The Village

a hundred, no man could ever accuse him of having done
anything that would aggregate forty years net. "Unless
Turl's night prowling might add up that much," Harker said.
"If Turl ever gets married, he wan't need no front door
a-tall; he wouldn't know what it was for. If he couldn't come
tom-catting in through the back window, he wouldn't know
what he come after. Would you, Turl?"

So from here on it is simple enough, since a man's mistakes,
like his successes, usually are simple. Particularly the success.
Perhaps that's why it is so often missed: it was just over-
looked.

"His mistake was in picking out Turl to pull his chestnuts,"
Harker said. "But even Turl wasn't as bad as the second mis-
take he made at the same time without knowing it. And that
was, when he forgot about that high yellow wife of Tom-
Tom's. When I found out how he had picked out Turl, out
of all the niggers in Jefferson, that's prowled at least once
(or tried to) every gal within ten miles of town, to go out to
Tom-Tom's house knowing all the time how Tom-Tom
would be down here wrastling coal until seven o'clock and
then have two miles to walk home, and expect Turl to spend
his time out there hunting for anything that ain't hid in Tom-
Tom's bed, and when I would think about Tom-Tom down
here, wrastling them boilers with this same amical cuckoldry
like the fellow said about Mr. Snopes and Colonel Hoxey>
stealing brass so he can keep Turl from getting his job away
from him, and Turl out yonder tending to Tom-Tom's home
business at the same time, sometimes I think I will die.

"It was bound to not last. The question was, which would
happen first: if Tom-Tom would catch Turl, or if Mr.
Snopes would catch Turl, or if I would bust a blood vessel
laughing some night. Well, it was Turl. He seemed to be
having too much trouble locating that brass; he had been
hunting it for three weeks alreadv, coming in a little late

Centaur in Brass 161

almost every night now, with Tom-Tom having to wait
until Turl come before he could start home. Maybe that was
it. Or maybe Mr. Snopes was out there himself one day, hid
in the bushes too, waiting for it to get along toward dark (it
was already April then); him on one side of Tom-Tom's
house and Turl creeping up through the corn patch on the
other. Anyway, he come back down here one night and he
was waiting when Turl come in about a half hour late, as
usual, and Tom-Tom all ready to go home soon as Turl got
here. Mr. Snopes sent for Turl and asked him if he had found
it.

" 'Find it when?' Turl says.

" 'While you was out there hunting for it about dusk to-
night,' Mr. Snopes says. And there's Turl, wondering just
how much Mr. Snopes knows, and if he can risk saying how
he has been at home in bed since six-thirty this morning, or
maybe up to Mottstown on business. 'Maybe you are still
looking for it in the wrong place,' Mr. Snopes says, watching
Turl, and Turl not looking at Mr. Snopes except maybe now
and then. 'If Tom-Tom had hid that iron in his bed, you
ought to done found it three weeks ago,' Mr. Snopes says.
'So suppose you look in that corn-crib where I told you to
look.'

"So Turl went out to look one more time. But he couldn't
seem to find it in the corn-crib neither. Leastways, that's
what he told Mr. Snopes when Mr. Snopes finally run him
down back here about nine o'clock one night. Turl was on a
kind of a spot, you might say. He would have to wait until
along toward dark to go up to the house, and already Tom-
Tom had been grumbling some about how Turl was getting
later and later about coming to work every night. And once
he found that brass, he would have to begin getting back to
the plant at seven o'clock, and the days getting longer all
the time.

1 62 The Village

"So Turl goes back to give one more go-round for that
brass evidence. But still he can't find it. He must have looked
under every shuck and thread in Tom-Tom's bed tick, but
without no more success than them two audits had. He just
couldn't seem to find that evidence nohow. So then Mr.
Snopes says he will give Turl one more chance, and if he
don't find that evidence this time, Mr. Snopes is going to tell
Tom-Tom how there is a strange tom-cat on his back fence.
And whenever a nigger husband in Jefferson hears that, he
finds out where Turl is at before he even sharpens his razor:
ain't that so, Turl?

"So the next evening Turl goes out to look again. To do
or die this time. He comes creeping up out of the woods
about sundown, the best time of day for brass hunting, spe-
cially as there is a moon that night. So here he comes, creep-
ing up through the corn patch to the back porch, where the
cot is, and pretty soon he can make out somebody in a white
nightgown laying on the cot. But Turl don't rise up and walk
even then; that ain't Turl's way. Turl plays by the rules. He
creeps up — it's dust-dark by then, and the moon beginning
to shine a little — all careful and quiet, and tom-cats up on to
the back porch and stoops over the cot and puts his hand on
nekkid meat and says, 'Honeybunch, papa's done arrived.' "

IV

IN THE VERY QUIET hearing of it I seemed to partake for the
instant of Turl's horrid surprise. Because it was Tom-Tom
on the cot; Tom-Tom, whom Turl believed to be at the mo-
ment two miles away, waiting for Turl to come and take
over from him at the power plant.

The night before, on his return home Tom-Tom had
brought with him a last year's watermelon which the local
butcher had kept all Winter in cold storage and which he

Centaur in Brass 163

had given to Tom-Tom, being himself afraid to eat it, and a
pint of whiskey. Tom-Tom and his wife consumed them and
went to bed, where an hour later she waked Tom-Tom by
her screaming. She was violently ill, and she was afraid that
she was dying. She was too frightened to let Tom-Tom go
for help, and while he dosed her as he could, she confessed to
him about herself and Turl. As soon as she told it she became
easier and went off to sleep, either before she had time to
realize the enormity of what she had done, or while she was
still too occupied in being alive to care.

But Tom-Tom wasn't. The next morning, after he con-
vinced himself that she was all right, he reminded her of it.
She wept some, and tried to retract; she ran the gamut of
tears to anger, through denial and cajolery back to tears
again. But she had Tom-Tom's face to look at all the while,
and so after a time she hushed and she just lay there, watching
him as he went methodically about cooking breakfast, her
own and his, saying no word, apparently oblivious of even
her presence. Then he fed her, made her eat, with the same
detachment, implacable and without heat. She was waiting
for him to leave for work; she was doubtless then and had
been all the while inventing and discarding practical expe-
dients; so busy that it was mid-morning before she realized
that he had no intention of going to town, though she did not
know that he had arranged to get word to the plant by seven
that morning that he would take the day off.

So she lay there in the bed, quite quiet, her eyes a little
wide, still as an animal, while he cooked their dinner and fed
her again with that clumsy and implacable care. And just
before sundown he locked her in the bedroom, she still saying
no word, not asking him what he was about, just watching
with her quiet, still eyes the door until it closed and the key
clicked. Then Tom-Tom put on one of her nightgowns and
with a naked butcher knife beside him, he lay down on the

1 64 The Village

cot on the back porch. And there he was, without having
moved for almost an hour, when Turl crept on to the porch
and touched him.

In the purely reflex action of Turl's turning to flee, Tom-
Tom rose, clutching the knife, and sprang at Turl. He leaped
astride of TurPs neck and shoulders; his weight was the impe-
tus which sent Turl off the porch, already running when
his feet touched earth, carrying with him on the retina of his
fear a single dreadful glint of moonlight on the blade of the
lifted knife, as he crossed the back lot and, with Tom-Tom
on his back, entered the trees — the two of them a strange
and furious beast with two heads and a single pair of legs like
an inverted centaur speeding phantomlike just ahead of the
boardlike streaming of Tom-Tom's shirt-tail and just beneath
the silver glint of the lifted knife, through the moony April
woods.

"Tom-Tom big buck man," Turl said. "Make three of me.
But I sho' toted him. And whenever I would see the moon
glint that butcher knife, I could a picked up two more like
him without even stopping." He said that at first he just ran;
it was only when he found himself among the trees that it
occurred to him that his only hope was to rake Tom-Tom off
against a tree trunk. "But he helt on so tight with that one
arm that whenever I busted him into a tree, I had to bust into
the tree too. And then we'd bounce off and I'd catch that
moonglint in that nekkid knife, and I could a picked up two
more Tom-Toms.

" 'Bout that time was when Tom-Tom started squalling.
He was holding on with both hands then, so I knowed that I
had done outrun that butcher knife anyhow. But I was good
started then; my feets never paid Tom-Tom no more mind
when he started squalling to stop and let him off than they
did me. Then Tom-Tom grabbed my head with both hands
and begun to haul it around like I was a runaway bareback

Centaur in Brass 165

mule, and then I seed the ditch. It was about forty foot deep
and it looked a solid mile across, but it was too late then. My
feets never even slowed up. They run far as from here to that
door yonder out into nekkid air before us even begun to fall.
And they was still clawing that moonlight when me and
Tom-Tom hit the bottom."

The first thing I wanted to know was, what Tom-Tom
used in lieu of the butcher knife which he had dropped. He
didn't use anything. He and Turl just sat there in the ditch
and talked. Because there is a sanctuary beyond despair for
any beast which has dared all, which even its mortal enemy
respects. Or maybe it was just nigger nature. Anyway, it was
perfectly plain to both of them as they sat there, perhaps
panting a little while they talked, that Tom-Tom's home had
been outraged, not by Turl, but by Flem Snopes; that Turl's
life and limbs had been endangered, not by Tom-Tom, but
by Flem Snopes.

That was so plain to them that they sat there quietly in the
ditch, getting their wind back, talking a little without heat
like two acquaintances meeting in the street; so plain that
they made their concerted plan without recourse to definite
words on the subject. They merely compared notes; perhaps
they laughed a little at themselves. Then they climbed out of
the ditch and returned to Tom-Tom's cabin, where Tom-
Tom unlocked his wife, and he and Turl sat before the hearth
while the woman prepared a meal for them, which they ate
as quietly but without loss of time: the two grave, scratched
faces leaned to the same lamp, above the same dishes, while
in the background the woman watched them, shadowy and
covert and unspeaking.

Tom-Tom took her to the barn with them to help load the
brass into the wagon, where Turl spoke for the first time
since they climbed together out of the ditch in Harker's

1 66 The Village

"amical" cuckoldry: "Great God, man, how long did it take
you to tote all this stuff out here?"

"Not long," Tom-Tom said. "Been working at it 'bout
two years."

It required four trips in the wagon; it was daybreak when
the last load was disposed of, and the sun was rising when
Turl entered the power plant, eleven hours late.

"Where in hell you been?" Harker said.

Turl glanced up at the three gauges, his scratched face
wearing an expression of monkeylike gravity. "Been helping
a friend of mine."

"Helping what friend of yours?"

"Boy named Turl," Turl said, squinting at the gauges.

V

"AND THAT WAS all he said," Harker said. "And me looking at
that scratched face of hisn, and at the mate of it that Tom-
Tom brought in at six o'clock. But Turl didn't tell me then.
And I ain't the only one he never told nothing that morning.
Because Mr. Snopes got there before six o'clock, before Turl
had got away. He sent for Turl and asked him if he had
found that brass and Turl told him no.

" 'Why didn't you find it?' Mr. Snopes said.

"Turl didn't look away, this time. 'Because it ain't no brass
there. That's the main reason.'

" 'How do you know there ain't?' Mr. Snopes says.

"And Turl looked him straight in them eyes. 'Because
Tom-Tom say it ain't,' Turl says.

"Maybe he ought to knew then. But a man will go to any
length to fool himself; he will tell himself stuff and believe it
that he would be downright mad with a fellow he had done
trimmed for believing it. So now he sends for Tom-Tom.

" 'I ain't got no brass,' Tom-Tom says.

Centaur in Brass 167

"Where is it, then?'

" 'It's where you said you wanted it.'

" 'Where I said I wanted it when?'

" 'When you took them whistle valves off the boilers,'
Tom-Tom says.

"That's what whipped him. He didn't dare to fire neither
one of them, you see. And so he'd have to see one of them
there all day long every day, and know that the other one
was there all night long every night; he would have to know
that during every twenty-four hours that passed, one or the
other of them was there, getting paid — paid, mind you, by
the hour — for living half their lives right there under that
tank with them four loads of brass in it that now belonged to
him by right of purchase and which he couldn't claim now
because now he had done waited too late.

"It sure was too late. But next New Year it got later. Come
New Year's and the town got audited again; again them two
spectacled fellows come down here and checked the books
and went away and come back with not only the city clerk,
but with Buck Conner too, with a warrant for Turl and
Tom-Tom. And there they were, hemming and hawing,
being sorry again, pushing one another in front to talk. It
seems how they had made a mistake two years ago, and
instead of three-hundred-and-four-fifty-two of this here
evaporating brass, there was five-hundred-and-twenty-five
dollars worth, leaving a net of over two-hundred-and-twenty
dollars. And there was Buck Conner with the warrant, all
ready to arrest Turl and Tom-Tom when he give the word,
and it so happening that Turl and Tom-Tom was both in the
boiler-room at that moment, changing shifts.

"So Snopes paid them. Dug down and hauled out the
money and paid them the two-hundred-and-twenty and got
his receipt. And about two hours later I happened to pass
through the office. At first I didn't see nobody^ because the

1 68 The Village

light was off. So I thought maybe the bulb was burned out,
seeing as that light burned all the time. But it wasn't burned
out; it was just turned out. Only before I turned it on I saw
him, setting there. So I didn't turn the light on. I just went
on out and left him setting there, setting right still."

VI

IN THOSE DAYS Snopes lived in a new little bungalow on the
edge of town, and, when shortly after that New Year he
resigned from the power plant, as the weather warmed into
Spring they would see him quite often in his tiny grassless
and treeless side yard. It was a locality of such other hopeless
little houses inhabited half by Negroes, and washed clay gul-
lies and ditches filled with scrapped automobiles and tin cans,
and the prospect was not pleasing. Yet he spent quite a lot
of his time there, sitting on the steps, not doing anything.
And so they wondered what he could be looking at there,
since there was nothing to see above the massed trees which
shaded the town itself except the low smudge of the power
plant, and the water tank. And it too was condemned now,
for the water had suddenly gone bad two years ago and the
town now had a new reservoir underground. But the tank
was a stout one and the water was still good to wash the
streets with, and so the town let it stand, refusing at one time
a quite liberal though anonymous offer to purchase and re-
move it.

So they wondered what Snopes was looking at. They
didn't know that he was contemplating his monument: that
shaft taller than anything in sight and filled with transient and
symbolical liquid that was not even fit to drink, but which,
for the very reason of its impermanence, was more enduring
through its fluidity and blind renewal than the brass which
poisoned it, than columns of basalt or of lead.

Dry September

i

THROUGH THE BLOODY September twilight, aftermath of
sixty-two rainless days, it had gone like a fire in dry grass —
the rumor, the story, whatever it was. Something about Miss
Minnie Cooper and a Negro. Attacked, insulted, frightened:
none of them, gathered in the barber shop on that Saturday
evening where the ceiling fan stirred, without freshening it,
the vitiated air, sending back upon them, in recurrent surges
of stale pomade and lotion, their own stale breath and odors,
knew exactly what had happened.

"Except it wasn't Will Mayes," a barber said. He was a
man of middle age; a thin, sand-colored man with a mild
face, who was shaving a client. "I know Will Mayes. He's
a good nigger. And I know Miss Minnie Cooper, too."

"What do you know about her?" a second barber said.

"Who is she?" the client said. "A young girl?"

"No," the barber said. 'rShe's about forty, I reckon. She
aint married. That's why I dont believe — "

"Believe, hell!" a hulking youth in a sweat-stained silk
shirt said. "Wont you take a white woman's word before a
nigger's?"

"I dont believe Will Mayes did it," the barber said. "I
know Will Mayes."

169

170 The Village

"Maybe you know who did it, then. Maybe you already
got him out of town, you damn niggerlover."

"I dont believe anybody did anything. I dont believe any-
thing happened. I leave it to you fellows if them ladies that
get old without getting married dont have notions that a

man cant — "

"Then you are a hell of a white man," the client said. He
moved under the cloth. The youth had sprung to his feet.

"You dont?" he said. "Do you accuse a white woman of
lying?"

The barber held the razor poised above the half-risen
client. He did not look around.

"It's this durn weather," another said. "It's enough to
make a man do anything. Even to her."

Nobody laughed. The barber said in his mild, stubborn
tone: "I aint accusing nobody of nothing. I just know and
you fellows know how a woman that never — "

"You damn niggerlover!" the youth said.

"Shut up, Butch," another said. "We'll get the facts in
plenty of time to act."

"Who is? Who's getting them?" the youth said. "Facts,
hell! I—"

"You're a fine white man," the client said. "Aint you?"
In his frothy beard he looked like a desert rat in the moving
pictures. "You tell them, Jack," he said to the youth. "If
there aint any white men in this town, you can count on
me, even if I aint only a drummer and a stranger."

"That's right, boys," the barber said. "Find out the truth
first. I know Will Mayes."

"Well, by God!" the youth shouted. "To think that a
white man in this town — "

"Shut up, Butch," the second speaker said. "We got
plenty of time."

The client sat up. He looked at the speaker. "Do you

Dry September 171

claim that anything excuses a nigger attacking a white
woman? Do you mean to tell me you are a white man and
you'll stand for it? You better go back North where you
came from. The South dont want your kind here."

"North what?" the second said. "I was born and raised in
this town."

"Well, by God!" the youth said. He looked about with
a strained, baffled gaze, as if he was trying to remember what
it was he wanted to say or to do. He drew his sleeve across
his sweating face. "Damn if I'm going to let a white
woman — "

"You tell them, Jack," the drummer said. "By God, if
they—"

The screen door crashed open. A man stood in the floor,
his feet apart and his heavy-set body poised easily. His white
shirt was open at the throat; he wore a felt hat. His hot,
bold glance swept the group. His name was McLendon. He
had commanded troops at the front in France and had been
decorated for valor.

"Well," he said, "are you going to sit there and let a black
son rape a white woman on the streets of Jefferson?"

Butch sprang up again. The silk of his shirt clung flat to
his heavy shoulders. At each armpit was a dark halfmoon,
"That's what I been telling them! That's what I — "

"Did it really happen?" a third said. "This aint the first
man scare she ever had, like Hawkshaw says. Wasn't there
something about a man on the kitchen roof, watching her
undress, about a year ago?"

"What?" the client said. "What's that?" The barber had
been slowly forcing him back into the chair; he arrested
himself reclining, his head lifted, the barber still pressing him
down.

McLendon whirled on the third speaker. "Happen? What

1 72 The Village

the hell difference does it make? Are you going to let the
black sons get away with it until one really does it?'*

"That's what I'm telling them!" Butch shouted. He cursed,
long and steady, pointless.

"Here, here," a fourth said. "Not so loud. Dont talk so
loud."

"Sure," McLendon said; "no talking necessary at all. I've
done my talking. Who's with me?" He poised on the balls
of his feet, roving his gaze.

The barber held the drummer's face down, the razor
poised. "Find out the facts first, boys. I know Willy Mayes.
It wasn't him. Let's get the sheriff and do this thing right."

McLendon whirled upon him his furious, rigid face. The
barber did not look away. They looked like men of different
races. The other barbers had ceased also above their prone
clients. "You mean to tell me," McLendon said, "that you'd
take a nigger's word before a white woman's? Why, you
damn niggerloving — "

The third speaker rose and grasped McLendon's arm; he
too had been a soldier. "Now, now. Let's figure this thing
out. Who knows anything about what really happened?"

"Figure out hell!" McLendon jerked his arm free. "All
that're with me get up from there. The ones that aint — "
He roved his gaze, dragging his sleeve across his face.

Three men rose. The drummer in the chair sat up. "Here,"
he said, jerking at the cloth about his neck; "get this rag off
me. I'm with him. I dont live here, but by God, if our
mothers and wives and sisters — " He smeared the cloth over
his face and flung it to the floor. McLendon stood in the
floor and cursed the others. Another rose and moved toward
him. The remainder sat uncomfortable, not looking at one
another, then one by one they rose and joined him.

The barber picked the cloth from the floor. He began to

Dry September 173

fold it neatly. "Boys, dont do that. Will Mayes never done
it. I know."

"Come on," McLendon said. He whirled. From his hip
pocket protruded the butt of a heavy automatic pistol. They
went out. The screen door crashed behind them reverberant
in the dead air.

The barber wiped the razor carefully and swiftly, and
put it away, and ran to the rear, and took his hat from the
wall. "I'll be back as soon as I can," he said to the other
barbers. "I cant let — " He went out, running. The two other
barbers followed him to the door and caught it on the re-
bound, leaning out and looking up the street after him. The
air was flat and dead. It had a metallic taste at the base of the
tongue.

"What can he do?" the first said. The second one was
saying "Jees Christ, Jees Christ" under his breath. "I'd just
as lief be Will Mayes as Hawk, if he gets McLendon riled."

"Jees Christ, Jees Christ," the second whispered.

"You reckon he really done it to her?" the first said.

II

SHE WAS thirty-eight or thirty-nine. She lived in a small
frame house with her invalid mother and a thin, sallow, un-
flagging aunt, where each morning between ten and eleven
she would appear on the porch in a lace-trimmed boudoir
cap, to sit swinging in the porch swing until noon. After
dinner she lay down for a while, until the afternoon began
to cool. Then, in one of the three or four new voile dresses
which she had each summer, she would go downtown to
spend the afternoon in the stores with the other ladies, where
they would handle the goods and haggle over the prices in
cold, immediate voices, without any intention of buying.
She was of comfortable people — not the best in Jefferson,

174 The Village

but good people enough — and she was still on the slender
side of ordinary looking, with a bright, faintly haggard man-
ner and dress. When she was young she had had a slender,
nervous body and a sort of hard vivacity which had enabled
her for a time to ride upon the crest of the town's social life
as exemplified by the high school party and church social
period of her contemporaries while still children enough to
be unclassconscious.

She was the last to realize that she was losing ground; that
those among whom she had been a little brighter and louder
flame than any other were beginning to learn the pleasure of
snobbery — male — and retaliation — female. That was when
her face began to wear that bright, haggard look. She still
carried it to parties on shadowy porticoes and summer lawns,
like a mask or a flag, with that bafflement of furious repudia-
tion of truth in her eyes. One evening at a party she heard
a boy and two girls, all schoolmates, talking. She never ac-
cepted another invitation.

She watched the girls with whom she had grown up as
they married and got homes and children, but no man ever
called on her steadily until the children of the other girls
had been calling her "aunty" for several years, the while
their mothers told them in bright voices about how popular
Aunt Minnie had been as a girl. Then the town began to see
her driving on Sunday afternoons with the cashier in the
bank. He was a widower of about forty — a high-colored
man, smelling always faintly of the barber shop or of whisky.
He owned the first automobile in town, a red runabout;
Minnie had the first motoring bonnet and veil the town ever
saw. Then the town began to say: "Poor Minnie." "But she
is old enough to take care of herself," others said. That was
when she began to ask her old schoolmates that their chil-
dren call her "cousin" instead of "aunty."

It was twelve vears now since she had been relegated into

Dry September 175

adultery by public opinion, and eight years since the cashier
had gone to a Memphis bank, returning for one day each
Christmas, which he spent at an annual bachelors' party at
a hunting club on the river. From behind their curtains the
neighbors would see the party pass, and during the over-the-
way Christmas day visiting they would tell her about him,
about how well he looked, and how they heard that he was
prospering in the city, watching with bright, secret eyes her
haggard, bright face. Usually by that hour there would be
the scent of whisky on her breath. It was supplied her by a
youth, a clerk at the soda fountain: "Sure; I buy it for the
old gal. I reckon she's entitled to a little fun."

Her mother kept to her room altogether now; the gaunt
aunt ran the house. Against that background Minnie's bright
dresses, her idle and empty days, had a quality of furious
unreality. She went out in the evenings only with women
now, neighbors, to the moving pictures. Each afternoon she
dressed in one of the new dresses and went downtown alone,
where her young "cousins" were already strolling in the late
afternoons with their delicate, silken heads and thin, awk-
ward arms and conscious hips, clinging to one another or
shrieking and giggling with paired boys in the soda fountain
when she passed and went on along the serried store fronts,
in the doors of which the sitting and lounging men did not
even follow her with their eyes any more.

Ill

THE BARBER WENT SWIFTLY up the street where the sparse
lights, insect-swirled, glared in rigid and violent suspension
in the lifeless air. The day had died in a pall of dust; above
the darkened square, shrouded by the spent dust, the sky
was as clear as the inside of a brass bell. Below the east was
a rumor of the twice-waxed moon.

176 The Village

When he overtook them McLendon and three others were
getting into a car parked in an alley. McLendon stooped his
thick head, peering out beneath the top, "Changed your
mind, did you?" he said. "Damn good thing; by God, to-
morrow when this town hears about how you talked to-
night—"

"Now, now," the other ex-soldier said. "Hawkshaw's all
right. Come on, Hawk; jump in."

"Will Mayes never done it, boys," the barber said. "If
anybody done it. Why, you all know well as I do there aint
any town where they got better niggers than us. And you
know how a lady will kind of think things about men when
there aint any reason to, and Miss Minnie anyway — "

"Sure, sure," the soldier said. "We're just going to talk
to him a little; that's all."

"Talk hell!" Butch said. "When we're through with
the—"

"Shut up, for God's sake!" the soldier said. "Do you want
everybody in town — "

"Tell them, by God!" McLendon said. "Tell every one
of the sons that'll let a white woman — "

"Let's go; let's go: here's the other car." The second car
slid squealing out of a cloud of dust at the alley mouth.
McLendon started his car and took the lead. Dust lay like
fog in the street. The street lights hung nimbused as in
water. They drove on out of town.

A rutted lane turned at right angles. Dust hung above it
too, and above all the land. The dark bulk of the ice plant,
where the Negro Mayes was night watchman, rose against
the sky. "Better stop here, hadn't we?" the soldier said.
McLendon did not reply. He hurled the car up and slammed
to a stop, the headlights glaring on the blank wall.

"Listen here, boys," the barber said; "if he's here, dont
that prove he never done it? Dont it? If it was him, he

Dry September 177

would run. Dont you see he would?" The second car came
up and stopped. McLendon got down; Butch sprang down
beside him. "Listen, boys," the barber said.

"Cut the lights off!" McLendon said. The breathless dark
rushed down. There was no sound in it save their lungs as
they sought air in the parched dust in which for two months
they had lived; then the diminishing crunch of McLendon's
and Dutch's feet, and a moment later McLendon's voice:

"Will! . . . Will!"

Below the east the wan hemorrhage of the moon increased.
It heaved above the ridge, silvering the air, the dust, so that
they seemed to breathe, live, in a bowl of molten lead. There
was no sound of nightbird nor insect, no sound save their
breathing and a faint ticking of contracting metal about the
cars. Where their bodies touched one another they seemed
to sweat dryly, for no more moisture came. "Christ!" a
voice said; "let's get out of here."

But they didn't move until vague noises began to grow
out of the darkness ahead; then they got out and waited
tensely in the breathless dark. There was another sound: a
blow, a hissing expulsion of breath and McLendon cursing
in undertone. They stood a moment longer, then they ran
forward. They ran in a stumbling clump, as though they
were fleeing something. "Kill him, kill the son," a voice
whispered. McLendon flung them back.

"Not here," he said. "Get him into the car." "Kill him,
kill the black son!" the voice murmured. They dragged the
Negro to the car. The barber had waited beside the car. He
could feel himself sweating and he knew he was going to be
sick at the stomach.

"What is it, captains?" the Negro said. "I aint done noth-
ing. Tore God, Mr John." Someone produced handcuffs.
They worked busily about the Negro as though he were a
post, quiet, intent, getting in one another's way. He sub-

178 The Village

mitted to the handcuffs, looking swiftly and constantly from
dim face to dim face. "Who's here, captains?" he said, lean-
ing to peer into the faces until they could feel his breath
and smell his sweaty reek. He spoke a name or two. "What
you all say I done, Mr John?"

McLendon jerked the car door open. "Get in!" he said.

The Negro did not move. "What you all going to do with
me, Mr John? I aint done nothing. White folks, captains, I
aint done nothing: I swear 'fore God." He called another
name.

"Get in!" McLendon said. He struck the Negro. The
others expelled their breath in a dry hissing and struck him
with random blows and he whirled and cursed them, and
swept his manacled hands across their faces and slashed the
barber upon the mouth, and the barber struck him also.
"Get him in there," McLendon said. They pushed at him.
He ceased struggling and got in and sat quietly as the others
took their places. He sat between the barber and the soldier,
drawing his limbs in so as not to touch them, his eyes going
swiftly and constantly from face to face. Butch clung to the
running board. The car moved on. The barber nursed his
mouth with his handkerchief.

"What's the matter, Hawk?" the soldier said.

"Nothing," the barber said. They regained the highroad
and turned away from town. The second car dropped back
out of the dust. They went on, gaining speed; the final
fringe of houses dropped behind.

"Goddamn, he stinks!" the soldier said.

"We'll fix that," the drummer in front beside McLendon
said. On the running board Butch cursed into the hot rush
of air. The barber leaned suddenly forward and touched
McLendon's arm.

"Let me out, John," he said.

"Jump out, niggerlover," McLendon said without turning

Dry September 179

his head. He drove swiftly. Behind them the sourceless lights
of the second car glared in the dust. Presently McLendon
turned into a narrow road. It was rutted with disuse. It led
back to an abandoned brick kiln — a series of reddish mounds
and weed- and vine-choked vats without bottom. It had been
used for pasture once, until one day the owner missed one
of his mules. Although he prodded carefully in the vats with
a long pole, he could not even find the bottom of them.

"John," the barber said.

"Jump out, then," McLendon said, hurling the car along
the ruts. Beside the barber the Negro spoke:

"Mr Henry."

The barber sat forward. The narrow tunnel of the road
rushed up and past. Their motion was like an extinct furnace
blast: cooler, but utterly dead. The car bounded from rut
to rut.

"Mr Henry," the Negro said.

The barber began to tug furiously at the door. "Look out,
there!" the soldier said, but the barber had already kicked
the door open and swung onto the running board. The
soldier leaned across the Negro and grasped at him, but he
had already jumped. The car went on without checking
speed.

The impetus hurled him crashing through dust-sheathed
weeds, into the ditch. Dust puffed about him, and in a thin,
vicious crackling of sapless stems he lay choking and retch-
ing until the second car passed and died away. Then he rose
and limped on until he reached the highroad and turned
toward town, brushing at his clothes with his hands. The
moon was higher, riding high and clear of the dust at last,
and after a while the town began to glare beneath the dust.
He went on, limping. Presently he heard cars and the glow
of them grew in the dust behind him and he left the road
and crouched again in the weeds until they passed. Me-

i8o The Village

Lendon's car came last now. There were four people in it
and Butch was not on the running board.

They went on; the dust swallowed them; the glare and
the sound died away. The dust of them hung for a while,
but soon the eternal dust absorbed it again. The barber
climbed back onto the road and limped on toward town.

IV

As SHE DRESSED for supper on that Saturday evening, her
own flesh felt like fever. Her hands trembled among the
hooks and eyes, and her eyes had a feverish look, and her
hair swirled crisp and crackling under the comb. While she
was still dressing the friends called for her and sat while she
donned her sheerest underthings and stockings and a new
voile dress. "Do you feel strong enough to go out?" they
said, their eyes bright too, with a dark glitter. "When you
have had time to get over the shock, you must tell us what
happened. What he said and did; everything."

In the leafed darkness, as they walked toward the square,
she began to breathe deeply, something like a swimmer pre-
paring to dive, until she ceased trembling, the four of them
walking slowly because of the terrible heat and out of
solicitude for her. But as they neared the square she began
to tremble again, walking with her head up, her hands
clenched at her sides, their voices about her murmurous, also
with that feverish, glittering quality of their eyes.

They entered the square, she in the center of the group,
fragile in her fresh dress. She was trembling worse. She
walked slower and slower, as children eat ice cream, her
head up and her eyes bright in the haggard banner of her
face, passing the hotel and the coatless drummers in chairs
along the curb looking around at her: "That's the one: see?
The one in pink in the middle." "Is that her? What did they

Dry September 181

do with the nigger? Did they—?" "Sure. He's all right."
"All right, is he?" "Sure. He went on a little trip." Then the
drug store, where even the young men lounging in the door-
way tipped their hats and followed with their eyes the
motion of her hips and legs when she passed.

They went on, passing the lifted hats of the gentlemen,
the suddenly ceased voices, deferent, protective. "Do you
see?" the friends said. Their voices sounded like long, hover-
ing sighs of hissing exultation. "There's not a Negro on the
square. Not one."

They reached the picture show. It was like a miniature
fairyland with its lighted lobby and colored lithographs of
life caught in its terrible and beautiful mutations. Her lips
began to tingle. In the dark, when the picture began, it
would be all right; she could hold back the laughing so it
would not waste away so fast and so soon. So she hurried on
before the turning faces, the undertones of low astonish-
ment, and they took their accustomed places where she could
see the aisle against the silver glare and the young men and
girls coming in two and two against it.

The lights flicked away; the screen glowed silver, and
soon life began to unfold, beautiful and passionate and sad,
while still the young men and girls entered, scented and
sibilant in the half dark, their paired backs in- silhouette deli-
cate and sleek, their slim, quick bodies awkward, divinely
young, while beyond them the silver dream accumulated,
inevitably on and on. She began to laugh. In trying to sup-
press it, it made more noise than ever; heads began to turn.
Still laughing, her friends raised her and led her out, and
she stood at the curb, laughing on a high, sustained note,
until the taxi came up and they helped her in.

They removed the pink voile and the sheer underthings
and the stockings, and put her to bed, and cracked ice for
her temples, and sent for the doctor. He was hard to locate,

1 82 The Village

so they ministered to her with hushed ejaculations, renew-
ing the ice and fanning her. While the ice was fresh and
cold she stopped laughing and lay still for a time, moaning
only a little. But soon the laughing welled again and her
voice rose screaming.

"Shhhhhhhhhhh! Shhhhhhhhhhhhhh!" they said, fresh-
ening the icepack, smoothing her hair, examining it for gray;
"poor girl!" Then to one another: "Do you suppose any-
thing really happened?" their eyes darkly aglitter, secret and
passionate. "Shhhhhhhhhh! Poor girl! Poor Minnie!"

V

IT WAS MIDNIGHT when McLendon drove up to his neat new
house. It was trim and fresh as a birdcage and almost as
small, with its clean, green-and-white paint. He locked the
car and mounted the porch and entered. His wife rose from
a chair beside the reading lamp. McLendon stopped in the
floor and stared at her until she looked down.

"Look at that clock," he said, lifting his arm, pointing.
She stood before him, her face lowered, a magazine in her
hands. Her face was pale, strained, and weary-looking.
"Haven't I told you about sitting up like this, waiting to
see when I come in?"

"John," she said. She laid the magazine down. Poised on
the balls of his feet, he glared at her with his hot eyes, his
sweating face.

"Didn't I tell you?" He went toward her. She looked up
then. He caught her shoulder. She stood passive, looking at
him.

"Don't, John. I couldn't sleep . . . The heat; something.
Please, John. You're hurting me."

"Didn't I tell you?" He released her and half struck, half
flung her across the chair, and she lay there and watched
him quietly as he left the room.

Dry September 183

He went on through the house, ripping off his shirt, and
on the dark, screened porch at the rear he stood and mopped
his head and shoulders with the shirt and flung it away. He
took the pistol from his hip and laid it on the table beside
the bed, and sat on the bed and removed his shoes, and rose
and slipped his trousers off. He was sweating again already,
and he stooped and hunted furiously for the shirt. At last
he found it and wiped his body again, and, with his body
pressed against the dusty screen, he stood panting. There
was no movement, no sound, not even an insect. The dark
world seemed to lie stricken beneath the cold moon and the
lidless stars.

Death Drag

THE AIRPLANE appeared over town with almost the abrupt-
ness of an apparition. It was travelling fast; almost before we
knew it was there it was already at the top of a loop; still
over the square, in violation of both city and government
ordinance. It was not a good loop either, performed viciously
and slovenly and at top speed, as though the pilot were
either a very nervous man or in a hurry, or (and this queerly:
there is in our town an ex-army aviator. He was coming out
of the post office when the airplane appeared going south; he
watched the hurried and ungraceful loop and he made the
comment) as though the pilot were trying to make the min-
imum of some specified manoeuvre in order to save gasoline.
The airplane came over the loop with one wing down, as
though about to make an Immelmann turn. Then it did a half
roll, the loop three-quarters complete, and without any break
in the whine of the full-throttled engine and still at top speed
and with that apparition-like suddenness, it disappeared east-
ward toward our airport. When the first small boys reached
the field, the airplane was on the ground, drawn up into a
fence corner at the end of the field. It was motionless and
empty. There was no one in sight at all. Resting there, empty
and dead, patched and shabby and painted awkwardly with a
single thin coat of dead black, it gave again that illusion of
ghostliness, as though it might have flown there and made
rhat loop and landed by itself.

1 86 The Village

Our field is still in an embryonic state. Our town is built
upon hills, and the field, once a cotton field, is composed of
forty acres of ridge and gully, upon which, by means of
grading and filling, we managed to build an X-shaped run-
way into the prevailing winds. The runways are long enough
in themselves, but the field, like our town, is controlled by
men who were of middle age when younger men first began
to fly, and so the clearance is not always good. On one side
is a grove of trees which the owner will not permit to be
felled; on another is the barnyard of a farm: sheds and
houses, a long barn with a roof of rotting shingles, a big hay-
cock. The airplane had come to rest in the fence corner near
the barn. The small boys and a Negro or two and a white
man, descended from a halted wagon in the road, were stand-
ing quietly about it when two men in helmets and lifted
goggles emerged suddenly around the corner of the barn.
One was tall, in a dirty coverall. The other was quite
short, in breeches and puttees and a soiled, brightly patterned
overcoat which looked as if he had got wet in it and it had
shrunk on him. He walked with a decided limp.

They had stopped at the corner of the barn. Without ap-
pearing to actually turn their heads, they seemed to take in at
one glance the entire scene, quickly. The tall man spoke.
"What town is this?"

One of the small boys told him the name of the town.

"Who lives here?" the tall man said.

"Who lives here?" the boy repeated.

"Who runs this field? Is it a private field?"

"Oh. It belongs to the town. They run it."

"Do they all live here? The ones that run it?"

The white man, the Negroes, the small boys, all watched
the tall man.

"What I mean, is there anybody in this town that flies,
that owns a ship? Any strangers here that fly?"

Death Drag 187

"Yes," the boy said. "There's a man lives here that flew in
the war, the English army."

"Captain Warren was in the Royal Flying Corps," a sec-
ond boy said.

"That's what I said," the first boy said.

"You said the English army," the second boy said.

The second man, the short one with the limp, spoke. He
spoke to the tall man, quietly, in a dead voice, in the diction
of Weber and Fields in vaudeville, making his iv^s into v's
and his ttfs into d's. "What does that mean?" he said.

"It's all right," the tall man said. He moved forward. "I
think I know him." The short man followed, limping, ter-
rific, crablike. The tall man had a gaunt face beneath a two-
days' stubble. His eyeballs looked dirty, too, with a strained,
glaring expression. He wore a dirty helmet of cheap, thin
cloth, though it was January. His goggles were worn, but
even we could tell that they were good ones. But then every-
body quit looking at him to look at the short man; later, when
we older people saw him, we said among ourselves that he
had the most tragic face we had ever seen; an expression of
outraged and convinced and indomitable despair, like that of
a man carrying through choice a bomb which, at a certain
hour each day, may or may not explode. He had a nose
which would have been out of proportion to a man six feet
tall. As shaped by his close helmet, the entire upper half of his
head down to the end of his nose would have fitted a six-foot
body. But below that, below a lateral line bisecting his head
from the end of his nose to the back of his skull, his jaw, the
rest of his face, was not two inches deep. His jaw was a long,
flat line clapping-to beneath his nose like the jaw of a shark, so
that the tip of his nose and the tip of his jaw almost touched.
His goggles were merely flat pieces of window-glass held in
felt frames. His helmet was leather. Down the back of it,
from the top to the hem, was a long savage tear, held together

1 88 The Village

top and bottom by strips of adhesive tape almost black with
dirt and grease.

From around the corner of the barn there now appeared a
third man, again with that abrupt immobility, as though he
had materialized there out of thin air; though when they saw
him he was already moving toward the group. He wore an
overcoat above a neat civilian suit; he wore a cap. He was a
little taller than the limping man, and broad, heavily built.
He was handsome in a dull, quiet way; from his face, a man
of infrequent speech. When he came up the spectators saw
that he, like the limping man, was also a Jew. That is, they
knew at once that two of the strangers were of a different
race from themselves, without being able to say what the
difference was. The boy who had first spoken probably re-
vealed by his next speech what they thought the difference
was. He, as well as the other boys, was watching the man
who limped.

"Were you in the war?" the boy said. "In the air war?"

The limping man did not answer. Both he and the tall man
were watching the gate. The spectators looked also and saw
a car enter the gate and come down the edge of the field1
toward them. Three men got out of the car and approached.
Again the limping man spoke quietly to the tall man: "Is that
one?"

"No," the tall man said, without looking at the other. He
watched the newcomers, looking from face to face. He spoke
to the oldest of the three. "Morning," he said. "You run this
field?"

"No," the newcomer said. "You want the secretary of the
Fair Association. He's in town."

"Any charge to use it?"

"I don't know. I reckon they'll be glad to have you use it."

"Go on and pay them," the limping man said.

The three newcomers looked at the airplane with that
blank, knowing, respectful air of groundlings. It reared on its

Death Drag 189

muddy wheels, the propeller motionless, rigid, with a quality
immobile and poised and dynamic. The nose was big with
engine, the wings taut, the fuselage streaked with oil behind
the rusting exhaust pipes. "Going to do some business here?"
the oldest one said.

"Put you on a show," the tall man said.

"What kind of show?"

"Anything you want. Wing-walking; death-drag."

"What's that? Death-drag?"

"Drop a man onto the top of a car and drag him off again.
Bigger the crowd, the more you'll get."

"You will get your money's worth," the limping man said.

The boys still watched him. "Were you in the war?" the
first boy said.

The third stranger had not spoken up to this time. He now
said: "Let's get on to town."

"Right," the tall man said. He said generally, in his flat,
dead voice, the same voice which the three strangers all
seemed to use, as though it were their common language:
"Where can we get a taxi? Got one in town?"

"We'll take you to town," the men who had come up in
the car said.

"We'll pay," the limping man said.

"Glad to do it," the driver of the car said. "I won't charge
you anything. You want to go now?"

"Sure," the tall man said. The three strangers got into the
back seat, the other three in front. Three of the boys fol-
lowed them to the car.

"Lemme hang on to town, Mr. Black?" one of the boys
said.

"Hang on," the driver said. The boys got onto the running
boards. The car returned to town. The three in front could
hear the three strangers talking in the back. They talked
quietly, in low, dead voices, somehow quiet and urgent, dis-
cussing something among themselves, the tall man and the

I9o The Village

handsome one doing most of the talking. The three in front
heard only one speech from the limping man: "I won't take
less . . ."

"Sure," the tall man said. He leaned forward and raised his
voice a little: "Where '11 1 find this Jones, this secretary?"

The driver told him.

"Is the newspaper or the printing shop near there? I want
some handbills."

"I'll show you," the driver said. "I'll help you get fixed
up."

"Fine," the tall man said. "Come out this afternoon and
Til give you a ride, if I have time."

The car stopped at the newspaper office. "You can get
your handbills here," the driver said.

"Good," the tall man said. "Is Jones's office on this street?"

"I'll take you there, too," the driver said.

"You see about the editor," the tall man said. "I can find
Jones, I guess." They got out of the car. "I'll come back
here," the tall man said. He went on down the street, swiftly,
in his dirty coverall and helmet. Two other men had joined
the group before the newspaper office. They all entered, the
limping man leading, followed by the three boys.

"I want some handbills," the limping man said. "Like this
one." He took from his pocket a folded sheet of pink paper.
He opened it; the editor, the boys, the five men, leaned to
see it. The lettering was black and bold:

DEMON DUNCAN
DAREDEVIL OF THE AIR

DEATH DEFYING SHOW WILL BE GIVEN

UNDER THE AUSPICES OF

THIS P.M. AT TWO P.M.

COME ONE COME ALL AND SEE DEMON DUNCAN
DEFY DEATH IN DEATH DROP & DRAG OF DEATH

Death Drag 191

"I want them in one hour," the limping man said.

"What you want in this blank space?" the editor said.

"What you got in this town?"

"What we got?"

"What auspices? American Legion? Rotary Club? Cham-
ber of Commerce?"

"We got all of them."

"I'll tell you which one in a minute, then," the limping
man said. "When my partner gets back."

"You have to have a guarantee before you put on the
show, do you?" the editor said.

"Why, sure. Do you think I should put on a daredevil
without auspices? Do you think I should for a nickel maybe
jump off the airplane?"

"Who's going to jump?" one of the later comers said; he
was a taxi-driver.

The limping man looked at him. "Don't you worry about
that," he said. "Your business is just to pay the money. We
will do all the jumping you want, if you pay enough."

"I just asked which one of you all was the jumper."

"Do I ask you whether you pay me in silver or in green-
backs?" the limping man said. "Do I ask you?"

"No," the taxi-driver said.

"About these bills," the editor said. "You said you wanted
them in an hour."

"Can't you begin on them, and leave that part out until
my partner comes back?"

"Suppose he don't come before they are finished?"

"Well, that won't be my fault, will it?"

"All right," the editor said. "Just so you pay for them."

"You mean, I should pay without a auspices on the hand-
bill?"

"I ain't in this business for fun," the editor said.

"We'll wait," the limping man said.

192 The Village

They waited.

"Were you a flyer in the war, Mister?" the boy said.

The limping man turned upon the boy his long, misshapen,
tragic face. "The war? Why should I fly in a war?"

"I thought maybe because of your leg. Captain Warren
limps, and he flew in the war. I reckon you just do it for
fun?"

"For fun? What for fun? Fly? Gruss Gott. I hate it, I wish
the man what invented them was here; I would put him into
that machine yonder and I would print on his back, Do not
do it, one thousand times."

"Why do you do it, then?" the man who had entered with
the taxi-driver said.

"Because of that Republican Coolidge. I was in business,
and that Coolidge ruined business; ruined it. That's why.
For fun? Gruss Gott."

They looked at the limping man. "I suppose you have a
license?" the second late-comer said.

The limping man looked at him. "A license?"

"Don't you have to have a license to fly?"

"Oh; a license. For the airplane to fly; sure, I understand.
Sure. We got one. You want to see it?"

"You're supposed to show it to anybody that wants to see
it, aren't you?"

"Why, sure. You want to see it?"

"Where is it?"

"Where should it be? It's nailed to the airplane, where the
government put it. Did you thought maybe it was nailed to
me? Did you thought maybe I had a engine on me and maybe
wings? It's on the airplane. Call a taxi and go to the airplane
and look at it."

"I run a taxi," the driver said.

"Well, run it. Take this gentleman out to the field where
he can look at the license on the airplane."

Death Drag 193

"It'll be a quarter," the driver said. But the limping man
was not looking at the driver. He was leaning against the
counter. They watched him take a stick of gum from his
pocket and peel it. They watched him put the gum into his
mouth. "I said it'll be a quarter, Mister," the driver said.

"Was you talking to me?" the limping man said.

"I thought you wanted a taxi out to the airport."

"Me? What for? What do I want to go out to the airport
for? I just come from there. I ain't the one that wants to see
that license. I have already seen it. I was there when the
government nailed it onto the airplane."

II

CAPTAIN WARREN, the ex-army flyer, was coming out of the
store, where he met the tall man in the dirty coverall. Cap-
tain Warren told about it in the barber shop that night, when
the airplane was gone.

"I hadn't seen him in fourteen years, not since I left Eng-
land for the front in '17. 'So it was you that rolled out of
that loop with two passengers and a twenty model Hisso
smokepot?' I said.

" 'Who else saw me?' he said. So he told me about it, stand-
ing there, looking over his shoulder every now and then. He
was sick; a man stopped behind him to let a couple of ladies
pass, and Jock whirled like he might have shot the man if
he'd had a gun, and while we were in the cafe some one
slammed a door at the back and I thought he would come
out of his monkey suit. It's a little nervous trouble I've got,'
he told me. Tm all right.' I had tried to get him to come out
home with me for dinner, but he wouldn't. He said that he
had to kind of jump himself and eat before he knew it, sort
of. We had started down the street and we were passing the
restaurant when he said: I'm going to eat,' and he turned

194 The Village

and ducked in like a rabbit and sat down with his back to
the wall and told Vernon to bring him the quickest thing he
had. He drank three glasses of water and then Vernon
brought him a milk bottle full and he drank most of that
before the dinner came up from the kitchen. When he took off
his helmet, I saw that his hair was pretty near white, and he
is younger than I am. Or he was, up there when we were in
Canada training. Then he told me what the name of his
nervous trouble was. It was named Ginsfarb. The little one;
the one that jumped off the ladder."

"What was the trouble?" we asked. "What were they
afraid of?"

"They were afraid of inspectors," Warren said. "They
had no licenses at all."

"There was one on the airplane."

"Yes. But it did not belong to that airplane. That one had
been grounded by an inspector when Ginsfarb bought it.
The license was for another airplane that had been wrecked,
and some one had helped Ginsfarb compound another felony
by selling the license to him. Jock had lost his license about
two years ago when he crashed a big plane full of Fourth-
of-July holidayers. Two of the engines quit, and he had to
land. The airplane smashed up some and broke a gas line,
but even then they would have been all right if a passenger
hadn't got scared (it was about dusk) and struck a match.
Jock was not so much to blame, but the passengers all burned
to death, and the government is strict. So he couldn't get a
license, and he couldn't make Ginsfarb even pay to take out
a parachute rigger's license. So they had no license at all; if
they were ever caught, they'd all go to the penitentiary."

"No wonder his hair was white," some one said.

"That wasn't what turned it white," Warren said. "I'll
tell you about that. So they'd go to little towns like this one,
fast, find out if there was anybody that might catch them,

Death Drag 195

and if there wasn't, they'd put on the show and then clear
out and go to another town, staying away from the cities.
They'd come in and get handbills printed while Jock and
the other one would try to get underwritten by some local
organization. They wouldn't let Ginsfarb do this part,
because he'd stick out for his price too long and they'd be
afraid to risk it. So the other two would do this, get what
they could, and if they could not get what Ginsfarb told
them to, they'd take what they could and then try to keep
Ginsfarb fooled until it was too late. Well, this time Ginsfarb
kicked up. I guess they had done it too much on him.

"So I met Jock on the street. He looked bad; I offered
him a drink, but he said he couldn't even smoke any more.
All he could do was drink water; he said he usually drank
about a gallon during the night, getting up for it.

" 'You look like you might have to jump yourself to
sleep, too,' I said.

" 'No, I sleep fine. The trouble is, the nights aren't long
enough. I'd like to live at the North Pole from September
to April, and at the South Pole from April to September.
That would just suit me.'

" 'You aren't going to last long enough to get there,' I
said.

" 'I guess so. It's a good engine. I see to that.'

" 'I mean, you'll be in jail.'

"Then he said: 'Do you think so? Do you guess I could?'

"We went on to the cafe. He told me about the racket,
and showed me one of those Demon Duncan handbills.
'Demon Duncan?' I said.

" 'Why not? Who would pay to see a man named Gins-
farb jump from a ship?'

" 'I'd pay to see that before I'd pay to see a man named
Duncan do it,' I said.

"He hadn't thought of that. Then he began to drink water,

196 The Village

and he told me that Ginsfarb had wanted a hundred dollars
for the stunt, but that he and the other fellow only got sixty.

" 'What are you going to do about it? ' I said.

" 'Try to keep him fooled and get this thing over and get
to hell away from here,' he said.

" 'Which one is Ginsfarb?' I said. 'The little one that looks
like a shark?'

"Then he began to drink water. He emptied my glass too
at one shot and tapped it on the table. Vernon brought him
another glass. 'You must be thirsty,' Vernon said.

" 'Have you got a pitcher of it?' Jock said.

" 'I could fill you a milk bottle.'

" 'Let's have it,' Jock said. 'And give me another glass
while I'm waiting.' Then he told me about Ginsfarb, why
his hair had turned gray.

" 'How long have you been doing this?' I said.

" 'Ever since the 2 6th of August.'

" 'This is just January,' I said.

"'What about it?'

" 'The 2 6th of August is not six months past.' "

He looked at me. Vernon brought the bottle of water.
Jock poured a glass and drank it. He began to shake, sitting
there, shaking and sweating, trying to fill the glass again.
Then he told me about it, talking fast, filling the glass and
drinking.

"Jake (the other one's name is Jake something; the good-
looking one) drives the car, the rented car. Ginsfarb swaps
onto the car from the ladder. Jock said he would have to fly
the ship into position over a Ford or a Chevrolet running on
three cylinders, trying to keep Ginsfarb from jumping from
twenty or thirty feet away in order to save gasoline in the
ship and in the rented car. Ginsfarb goes out on the bottom
wing with his ladder, fastens the ladder onto a strut, hooks
himself into the other end of the ladder, and drops off; every-
body on the ground thinks that he has done what they all

Death Drag 197

came to see: fallen off and killed himself. That's what he
calls his death-drop. Then he swaps from the ladder onto the
top of the car, and the ship comes back and he catches the
ladder and is dragged off again. That's his death-drag.

"Well, up till the day when Jock's hair began to turn
white, Ginsfarb, as a matter of economy, would do it all at
once; he would get into position above the car and drop off
on his ladder and then make contact with the car, and some-
times Jock said the ship would not be in the air three min-
utes. Well, on this day the rented car was a bum or some-
thing; anyway, Jock had to circle the field four or five times
while the car was getting into position, and Ginsfarb, seeing
his money being blown out the exhaust pipes, finally refused
to wait for Jock's signal and dropped off anyway. It was all
right, only the distance between the ship and the car was not
as long as the rope ladder. So Ginsfarb hit on the car, and
Jock had just enough soup to zoom and drag Ginsfarb, still
on the ladder, over a high-power electric line, and he held
the ship in that climb for twenty minutes while Ginsfarb
climbed back up the ladder with his leg broken. He held the
ship in a climb with his knees, with the throttle wide open
and the engine revving about eleven hundred, while he
reached back and opened that cupboard behind the cockpit
and dragged out a suitcase and propped the stick so he could
get out on the wing and drag Ginsfarb back into the ship.
He got Ginsfarb in the ship and on the ground again and
Ginsfarb says: 'How far did we go?' and Jock told him they
had flown with full throttle for thirty minutes and Ginsfarb
says: 'Will you ruin me yet?' "

III

THE REST of this is composite. It is what we (groundlings,
dwellers in and backbone of a small town interchangeable
with and duplicate of ten thousand little dead clottings of

198 The Village

human life about the land) saw, refined and clarified by the
expert, the man who had himself seen his own lonely and
scudding shadow upon the face of the puny and remote
earth.

The three strangers arrived at the field, in the rented car.
When they got out of the car, they were arguing in tense,
dead voices, the pilot and the handsome man against the man
who limped. Captain Warren said they were arguing about
the money.

"I want to see it," Ginsfarb said. They stood close; the
handsome man took something from his pocket.

"There. There it is. See?" he said.

"Let me count it myself," Ginsfarb said.

"Come on, come on," the pilot hissed, in his dead, tense
voice. "We tell you we got the money! Do you want an
inspector to walk in and take the money and the ship too and
put us in jail? Look at all these people waiting."

"You fooled me before," Ginsfarb said.

"All right," the pilot said. "Give it to him. Give him his
ship too. And he can pay for the car when he gets back to
town. We can get a ride in; there's a train out of here in
fifteen minutes."

"You fooled me once before," Ginsfarb said.

"But we're not fooling you now. Come on. Look at all
these people."

They moved toward the airplane, Ginsfarb limping ter-
rifically, his back stubborn, his face tragic, outraged, cold.
There was a good crowd: country people in overalls; the
men a general dark clump against which the bright dresses
of the women, the young girls, showed. The small boys and
several men were already surrounding the airplane. We
watched the limping man begin to take objects from the body
of it: a parachute, a rope ladder. The handsome man went
to the propeller. The pilot got into the back seat.

Death Drag 199

"Off!" he said, sudden and sharp. "Stand back, folks.
We're going to wring the old bird's neck."

They tried three times to crank the engine.

"I got a mule, Mister," a countryman said. "How much'll
you pay for a tow?"

The three strangers did not laugh. The limping man was
busy attaching the rope ladder to one wing.

"You can't tell me," a countrywoman said. "Even he ain't
that big a fool."

The engine started then. It seemed to lift bodily from the
ground a small boy who stood behind it and blow him aside
like a leaf. We watched it turn and trundle down the field.

"You can't tell me that thing's flying," the countrywoman
said. "I reckon the Lord give me eyes. I can see it ain't flying.
You folks have been fooled."

"Wait," another voice said. "He's got to turn into the
wind."

"Ain't there as much wind right there or right here as
there is down yonder?" the woman said. But it did fly. It
turned back toward us; the noise became deafening. When
it came broadside on to us, it did not seem to be going f A,
yet we could see daylight beneath the wheels and the earth.
But it was not going fast; it appeared rather to hang gently
just above the earth until we saw that, beyond and beneath
it, trees and earth in panorama were fleeing backward at
dizzy speed, and then it tilted and shot skyward with a noise
like a circular saw going into a white oak log. "There ain't
nobody in it!" the countrywoman said. "You can't tell me!"

The third man, the handsome one in the cap, had got into
the rented car. We all knew it: a battered thing which the
owner would rent to any one who would make a deposit of
ten dollars. He drove to the end of the field, faced down the
runwav, and stopped. We looked back at the airplane. It

2oo The Village

was high, coming back toward us; some one cried suddenly,
his voice puny and thin: "There! Out on the wing! See?''

"It ain't!" the countrywoman said. "I don't believe it!"

"You saw them get in it," some one said.

"I don't believe it!" the woman said.

Then we sighed; we said, "Aaahhhhhhh"; beneath the
wing of the airplane there was a falling dot. We knew it was
a man. Some way we knew that that lonely, puny, falling
shape was that of a living man like ourselves. It fell. It
seemed to fall for years, yet when it checked suddenly up
without visible rope or cord, it was less far from the airplane
than was the end of the delicate pen-slash of the profiled
wing.

"It ain't a man!" the woman shrieked.

"You know better," the man said. "You saw him get in it."

"I don't care!" the woman cried. "It ain't a man! You
take me right home this minute!"

The rest is hard to tell. Not because we saw so little; we
saw everything that happened, but because we had so little
in experience to postulate it with. We saw that battered
rented car moving down the field, going faster, jouncing in
the broken January mud, then the sound of the airplane
blotted it, reduced it to immobility; we saw the dangling
ladder and the shark-faced man swinging on it beneath the
death-colored airplane. The end of the ladder raked right
across the top of the car, from end to end, with the limping
man on the ladder and the capped head of the handsome
man leaning out of the car. And the end of the field was
coming nearer, and the airplane was travelling faster than the
car, passing it. And nothing happened. "Listen!" some one
cried. "They are talking to one another!"

Captain Warren told us what they were talking about, the
two Jews yelling back and forth at one another: the shark-

Death Drag 201

faced man on the dangling ladder that looked like a cobweb,
the other one in the car; the fence, the end of the field, com-
ing closer.

"Come on!" the man in the car shouted.

"What did they pay?"

"Jump!"

"If they didn't pay that hundred, I won't do it."

Then the airplane zoomed, roaring, the dangling figure on
the gossamer ladder swinging beneath it. It circled the field
twice while the man got the car into position again. Again
the car started down the field; again the airplane came down
with its wild; circular-saw drone which died into a splutter
as the ladder and the clinging man swung up to the car from
behind; again we heard the two puny voices shrieking at one
another with a quality at once ludicrous and horrible: the
one coming out of the very air itself, shrieking about some-
thing sweated out of the earth and without value anywhere
else:

"How much did you say?"

"Jump!"

"What? How much did they pay?"

"Nothing! Jump!"

"Nothing?" the man on the ladder wailed in a fading, out-
raged shriek. "Nothing?" Again the airplane was dragging
the ladder irrevocably past the car, approaching the end of
the field, the fences, the long barn with its rotting roof. Sud-
denly we saw Captain Warren beside us; he was using words
we had never heard him use.

"He's got the stick between his knees," Captain Warren
said. "Exalted suzerain of mankind; saccharine and sacred
symbol of eternal rest." We had forgot about the pilot, the
man still in the airplane. We saw the airplane, tilted upward,
the pilot standing upright in the back seat, leaning over the
side and shaking both hands at the man on the ladder. We

202 The Village

could hear him yelling now as again the man on the ladder
was dragged over the car and past it, shrieking:

"I won't do it! I won't do it!" He was still shrieking when
the airplane zoomed; we saw him, a diminishing and shriek-
ing spot against the sky above the long roof of the barn: "I
won't do it! I won't do it!" Before, when the speck left the
airplane, falling, to be snubbed up by the ladder, we knew
that it was a living man; again, when the speck left the lad-
der, falling, we knew that it was a living man, and we knew
that there was no ladder to snub him up now. We saw hin?
falling against the cold, empty January sky until the sil-
houette of the barn absorbed him; even from here, his atti-
tude froglike, outraged, implacable. From somewhere in the
crowd a woman screamed, though the sound was blotted out
by the sound of the airplane. It reared skyward with its wild,
tearing noise, the empty ladder swept backward beneath it.
The sound of the engine was like a groan, a groan of relief
and despair.

IV

CAPTAIN WARREN told us in the barber shop on that Satur-
day night.

"Did he really jump off, onto that barn?" we asked him.

"Yes. He jumped. He wasn't thinking about being killed,
or even hurt. That's why he wasn't hurt. He was too mad,
too in a hurry to receive justice. He couldn't wait to fly back
down. Providence knew that he was too busy and that he
deserved justice, so Providence put that barn there with the
rotting roof. He wasn't even thinking about hitting the barn;
if he'd tried to, let go of his belief in a cosmic balance to
bother about landing, he would have missed the barn and
killed himselfe"

It didr\ hurt him at all, save for a long scratch on his face

Death Drag 205

that bled a lot, and his overcoat was torn completely down
the back, as though the tear down the back of the helmet had
run on down the overcoat. He came out of the barn running
before we got to it. He hobbled right among us, with his
bloody face, his arms waving, his coat dangling from either
shoulder.

"Where is that secretary?" he said.

"What secretary?"

"That American Legion secretary." He went on, limping
fast, toward where a crowd stood about three women who
had fainted. "You said you would pay a hundred dollars to
see me swap to that car. We pay rent on the car and all, and
now you would — "

"You got sixty dollars," some one said.

The man looked at him. "Sixty? I said one hundred. Then
you would let me believe it was one hundred and it was
just sixty; you would see me risk my life for sixty dollars.
. . ." The airplane was down; none of us were aware of it
until the pilot sprang suddenly upon the man who limped.
He jerked the man around and knocked him down before
we could grasp the pilot. We held the pilot, struggling,
crying, the tears streaking his dirty, unshaven face. Captain
Warren was suddenly there, holding the pilot.

"Stop it! "he said. "Stop it!"

The pilot ceased. He stared at Captain Warren, then he
slumped and sat on the ground in his thin, dirty garment,
with his unshaven face, dirty, gaunt, with his sick eyes,
crying. "Go away," Captain Warren said. "Let him alone
for a minute."

We went away, back to the other man, the one who
limped. They had lifted him and he drew the two halves
of his overcoat forward and looked at them. Then he said:
"I want some chewing gum."

Some one gave him a stick. Another offered him a ciga-

204 The Village

rette. "Thanks," he said. "I don't burn up no money. I ain't
got enough of it yet." He put the gum into his mouth. "You
would take advantage of me. If you thought I would risk
my life for sixty dollars, you fool yourself."

"Give him the rest of it," some one said. "Here's my
share."

The limping man did not look around. "Make it up to
a hundred, and I will swap to the car like on the handbill,"
he said.

Somewhere a woman screamed behind him. She began
to laugh and to cry at the same time. "Don't . . ." she said,
laughing and crying at the same time. "Don't let . . ." until
they led her away. Still the limping man had not moved.
He wiped his face on his cuff and he was looking at his
bloody sleeve when Captain Warren came up.

"How much is he short?" \Varren said. They told Warren.
He took out some money and gave it to the limping man.

"You want I should swap to the car?" he said.

"No," Warren said. "You get that crate out of here quick
as you can."

"Well, that's your business," the limping man said. "I got
witnesses I offered to swap." He moved; we made way and
watched him, in his severed and dangling overcoat, approach
the airplane. It was on the runway, the engine running. The
third man was already in the front seat. We watched the
limping man crawl terrifically in beside him. They sat there,
looking forward.

The pilot began to get up. Warren was standing beside
him. "Ground it," Warren said. "You are coming home
with me."

"I guess we'd better get on," the pilot said. He did not
look at Warren. Then he put out his hand. "Well . . ." he
said.

Warren did not take his hand. "You come on home with
me," he said.

Death Drag 205

"Who'd take care of that bastard?"

"Who wants to?"

"I'll get him right, some day. Where I can beat hell out
of him."

"Jock," Warren said.

"No," the other said.

"Have you got an overcoat?"

"Sure I have."

"You're a liar." Warren began to pull off his overcoat.

"No," the other said; "I don't need it." He went on toward
the machine. "See you some time," he said over his shoulder.
We watched him get in, heard an airplane come to life, come
alive. It passed us, already off the ground. The pilot jerked
his hand once, stiffly; the two heads in the front seat did not
turn nor move. Then it was gone, the sound was gone.

Warren turned. "What about that car they rented?" he
said.

"He give me a quarter to take it back to town," a boy said.

"Can you drive it?"

"Yes, sir. I drove it out here. I showed him where to

rent it."

"The one that jumped?"

"Yes, sir." The boy looked a little aside. "Only I'm a little
scared to take it back. I don't reckon you could come with
me."

"Why, scared?" Warren said.

"That fellow never paid nothing down on it, like Mr.
Harris wanted. He told Mr. Harris he might not use it, but
if he did use it in his show, he would pay Mr. Harris twenty
dollars for it instead of ten like Mr. Harris wanted. He told
me to take it back and tell Mr. Harris he never used the car,
And I don't know if Mr. Harris will like it. He might gel
mad."

Elly

BORDERING THE SHEER DROP of the precipice, the wooden
railing looked like a child's toy. It followed the curving
road in thread-like embrace, passing the car in a flimsy blur.
Then it flicked behind and away like a taut ribbon cut with
scissors.

Then they passed the sign, the first sign, Mills City. 6 mi
and Elly thought, with musing and irrevocable astonishment,
'Now we are almost there. It is too late now'; looking at
Paul beside her, his hands on the wheel, his face in profile
as he watched the fleeing road. She said, * Well. What can I
do to make you marry me, Paul?" thinking 'There was a
man plowing in that field, watching us when we came out
of those woods with Paul carrying the motor-robe, and got
back into the car,' thinking this quietly, with a certain de-
tachment and inattention, because there was something else
about to obliterate it. 'Something dreadful that I have for-
gotten about/ she thought, watching the swift and increasing
signs which brought Mills City nearer and nearer. 'Some-
thing terrible that I shall remember in a minute,' saying
aloud, quietly: "There's nothing else I can do now, is there?"

Still Paul did not look at her. "No," he said. "There's
nothing else you can do."

Then she remembered what it was she had forgotten. She
remembered her grandmother, thinking of the old woman

207

2o8 The Village

with her dead hearing and her inescapable cold eyes waiting
at Mills City, with amazed and quiet despair: 'How could
I have ever forgot about her? How could I have? How
could I?'

She was eighteen. She lived in Jefferson, two hundred
miles away, with her father and mother and grandmother,
in a biggish house. It had a deep veranda with screening
vines and no lights. In this shadow she half lay almost nightly
with a different man — youths and young men of the town
at first, but later with almost anyone, any transient in the
small town whom she met by either convention or by
chance, provided his appearance was decent. She would
never ride in their cars with them at night, and presently
they all believed that they knew why, though they did not
always give up hope at once — until the courthouse clock
struck eleven. Then for perhaps five minutes longer they
(who had been practically speechless for an hour or more)
would talk in urgent whispers:

"You must go now."

"No. Not now."

"Yes. Now."

"Why?"

"Because. I'm tired. I want to go to bed."

"I see. So far, and no mother. Is that it?"

"Maybe." In the shadow now she would be alert, cool,
already fled, without moving, beyond some secret reserve
of laughter. And he would leave, and she would enter the
dark house and look up at the single square of light which
fell upon the upper hallway, and change completely. Wearily
now, with the tread almost of an old woman, she would
mount the stairs and pass the open door of the lighted room
where her grandmother sat, erect, an open book in her
hands, facing the hall. Usually she did not look into the
room when she passed. But now *nd then she did. Then

Elly 209

for an instant they would look full at one another: the old
woman cold, piercing; the girl weary, spent, her face, her
dark dilated eyes, filled with impotent hatred. Then she
would go on and enter her own room and lean for a time
against the door, hearing the grandmother's light click off
presently, sometimes crying silently and hopelessly, whis-
pering, "The old bitch. The old bitch." Then this would
pass. She would undress and look at her face in the mirror,
examining her mouth now pale of paint and heavy, flattened
(so she would believe) and weary and dulled with kissing,
thinking 'My God. Why do I do it? What is the matter
with me?' thinking of how tomorrow she must face the old
woman again with the mark of last night upon her mouth
like bruises, with a feeling of the pointlessness and emptiness
of life more profound than the rage or the sense of perse-
cution.

Then one afternoon at the home of a girl friend she met
Paul de Montigny. After he departed the two girls were
alone. Now they looked at one another quietly, like two
swordsmen, with veiled eyes.

"So you like him, do you?" the friend said. "You've got
queer taste, haven't you?"

"Like who?" Elly said. "I don't know who you are talk-
ing about."

"Oh yeah?" the friend said. "You didn't notice his hair
then. Like a knitted cap. And his lips. Blubber, almost." Elly
looked at her.

"What are you talking about?" Elly said.

"Nothing," the other said. She glanced toward the hall,
then she took a cigarette from the front of her dress and lit
it. "I don't know anything about it. I just heard it, too. How
his uncle killed a man once that accused him of having nigger
blood."

"You're lying," Elly said.

210 The Village

The other expelled smoke. "All right. Ask your grand-
mother about his family. Didn't she used to live in Louisiana
too?"

"What about you?" Elly said. "You invited him into your
house."

"I wasn't hid in the cloak closet, kissing him, though."

"Oh, yeah?" Elly said. "Maybe you couldn't."

"Not till you got your face out of the way, anyhow," the
other said.

That night she and Paul sat on the screened and shadowed
veranda. But at eleven o'clock it was she who was urgent
and tense: "No! No! Please. Please."

"Oh, come on. What are you afraid of?"

"Yes. I'm afraid. Go, please. Please."

"Tomorrow, then?"

"No. Not tomorrow or any time."

"Yes. Tomorrow."

This time she did not look in when she passed her grand-
mother's door. Neither did she lean against her own door
to cry. But she was panting, saying aloud against the door
in thin exultation: "A nigger. A nigger. I wonder what she
would say if she knew about that."

The next afternoon Paul walked up onto the veranda.
Elly was sitting in the swing, her grandmother in a chair
nearby. She rose and met Paul at the steps. "Why did you
come here?" she said. "Why did you?" Then she turned
and seemed to watch herself walking before him toward the
thin old woman sitting bolt upright, sitting bolt and impla-
cably chaste in that secret place, peopled with ghosts, very
likely to Elly at any given moment uncountable and un-
namable, who might well have owned one single mouth.
She leaned down, screaming: "This is Mr. de Montigny,
Grandmother! "

"What?"

Elly 2 1 1

"Mr. de Montigny! From Louisiana!" she screamed, and
saw the grandmother, without moving below the hips, start
violently backward as a snake does to strike. That was in
the afternoon. That night Elly quitted the veranda for the
first time. She and Paul were in a close clump of shrubbery
on the lawn; in the wild close dark for that instant Elly
was lost, her blood aloud with desperation and exultation
and vindication too, talking inside her at the very brink of
surrender loud as a voice: "I wish she were here to see! I
wish she were here to see!" when something — there had
been no sound — shouted at her and she made a mad awkward
movement of recovery. The grandmother stood just behind
and above them. When she had arrived, how long she had
been there, they did not know. But there she stood, saying
nothing, in the long anti-climax while Paul departed without
haste and Elly stood, thinking stupidly, 'I am caught in sin
without even having time to sin.' Then she was in her room,
leaning against the door, trying to still her breathing, listen-
ing for the grandmother to mount the stairs and go to her
father's room. But the old woman's footsteps ceased at her
own door. Elly went to her bed and lay upon it without
undressing, still panting, the blood still aloud. 'So/ she
thought, 'it will be tomorrow. She will tell him in the morn-
ing.' Then she began to writhe, to toss lightly from side to
side. 'I didn't even have a chance to sin,' she thought, with
panting and amazed regret. 'She thinks I did and she will tell
that I did, yet I am still virgin. She drove me to it, then pre-
vented me at the last moment.' Then she was lying with the
sun in her eyes still fully dressed. 'So it will be this morning,
today/ she thought dully. 'My God. How could I. How
could I. I don't want any man, anything.'

She was waiting in the dining-room when her father came
down to breakfast. He said nothing, apparently knew noth-
ing. 'Maybe it's mother she told/ Elly thought. But after a

zi2 The Village

while her mother, too, appeared and departed for town also,
saying nothing. 'So it has not been yet,' she thought, mount-
ing the stairs. Her grandmother's door was closed. "When
she opened it, the old woman was sitting up in bed, reading
a newspaper; she looked up, cold, still, implacable, while
Elly screamed at her in the empty house: "What else can I
do, in this little dead, hopeless town? I'll work. I don't want
to be idle. Just find me a job — anything, anywhere, so that
it's so far away that I'll never have to hear the word Jeffer-
son again." She was named for the grandmother — Ailanthia,
though the old woman had not heard her own name or her
granddaughter's or anyone else's in almost fifteen years save
when it was screamed at her as Elly now screamed: "It
hadn't even happened last night! Won't you believe me?
That's it. It hadn't even happened! At least, I would have
had something, something . . ." with the other watching her
with that cold, fixed, immobile, inescapable gaze of the very
deaf. "All right!" Elly cried. "I'll get married then! Will you
be satisfied then?"

That afternoon she met Paul downtown. "Was everything
all right last night?" he said. "Why, what is it? Did they — "

"No. Paul, marry me." They were in the rear of the
drugstore, partially concealed by the prescription counter,
though anyone might appear behind it at any moment. She
leaned against him, her face wan, tense, her painted mouth
like a savage scar upon it. "Marry me. Or it will be too late,
Paul."

"I don't marry them," Paul said. "Here. Pull yourself
together."

She leaned against him, rife with promise. Her voice was
wan and urgent. "We almost did last night. If you'll marry
me, I will"

"You will, eh? Before or after?"

"Yes. Now. Any time."

Elly 2 1 3

"I'm sorry," he said.

"Not even if I will now?"

"Come on, now. Pull yourself together."

"Oh, I can hear you. But I don't believe you. And I am
afraid to try and find out." She began to cry. He spoke in
thin and mounting annoyance:

"Stop it, I tell you!"

"Yes. All right. I've stopped. You won't, then? I tell you,
it will be too late."

"Hell, no. I don't marry them, I tell you."

"All right. Then it's good-bye. Forever."

"That's O.K. by me, too. If that's how you feel. If I ever
see you again, you know what it will mean. But no marry-
ing. And I'll see next time that we don't have any audience,"

"There won't be any next time," Elly said.

The next day he was gone. A week later, her engagement
was in the Memphis papers. It was to a young man whom
she had known from childhood. He was assistant cashier in
the bank, who they said would be president of it some day.
He was a grave, sober young man of impeccable character
and habits, who had been calling on her for about a year
with a kind of placid formality. He took supper with the
family each Sunday night, and when infrequent road shows
came to town he always bought tickets for himself and Elly
and her mother. When he called on her, even after the
engagement was announced, they did not sit in the dark
swing. Perhaps he did not know that anyone had ever sat
in it in the darkness. No one sat in it at all now, and Elly
passed the monotonous round of her days in a kind of dull
peace. Sometimes at night she cried a little, though not often;
now and then she examined her mouth in the glass and cried
quietly, with quiet despair and resignation. 'Anyway I can
live quietly now,' she thought. 'At least I can live out the
rest of my dead life as quietly as if I were already dead.'

Then one dav. without warning, as though she, too, had

214 The Village

accepted the armistice and the capitulation, the grandmother
departed to visit her son in Mills City. Her going seemed to
leave the house bigger and emptier than it had ever been,
as if the grandmother had been the only other actually living
person in it. There were sewing women in the house daily
now, making the trousseau, yet Elly seemed to herself to
move quietly and aimlessly, in a hiatus without thought or
sense, from empty room to empty room giving upon an
identical prospect too familiar and too peaceful to be even
saddening any longer. For long hours now she would stand
at her mother's bedroom window, watching the slow and
infinitesimal clematis tendrils as they crept and overflowed
up the screen and onto the veranda roof with the augment-
ing summer. Two months passed so; she would be married
in three weeks. Then one day her mother said, "Your grand-
mother wants to come home Sunday. Why don't you and
Philip drive down to Mills City and spend Saturday night
with your uncle, and bring her back Sunday?" Five minutes
later, at the mirror, Elly looked at her reflection as you look
at someone who has just escaped a fearful danger. 'God,'
she thought, 'what was I about to do? What 'was I about
to do?

Within the hour she had got Paul on the telephone, leav-
ing home to do it, taking what precautions for secrecy her
haste would afford her.

"Saturday morning?" he said.

"Yes. I'll tell mother Phi ... he wants to leave early, at
daylight. They won't recognize you or the car. I'll be ready
and we can get away quick."

"Yes." She could hear the wire, distance; she had a feeling
of exultation, escape. "But you know what it means. If I
come back. What I told you."

"I'm not afraid. I still don't believe you, but I am not
afraid to try it now."

Elly 215

Again she could hear the wire. "I'm not going to marry
you, Elly."

"All right, darling. I tell you I'm not afraid to try it any
more. Exactly at daylight. I'll be waiting."

She went to the bank. After a time Philip was free and
came to her where she waited, her face tense and wan
beneath the paint, her eyes bright and hard. "There is some-
thing you must do for me. It's hard to ask, and I guess it will
be hard to do."

"Of course I'll do it. What is it?"

"Grandmother is coming home Sunday. Mother wants
you and me to drive down Saturday and bring her back."

"All right. I can get away Saturday."

"Yes. You see, I told you it would be hard. I don't want
you to go."

"Don't want me to . . ." He looked at her bright, almost
haggard face. "You want to go alone?" She didn't answer,
watching him. Suddenly she came and leaned against him
with a movement practiced, automatic. She took one of his
arms and drew it around her. "Oh," he said. "I see. You
want to go with someone else."

"Yes. I can't explain now. But I will later. But mother will
never understand. She won't let me go unless she thinks it
is you."

"I see." His arm was without life; she held it about her.
"It's another man you want to go with."

She laughed, not loud, not long. "Don't be foolish. Yes.
There's another man in the party. People you don't know
and that I don't expect to see again before I am married.
But mother won't understand. That's why I must ask you.
Will you do it?"

"Yes. It's all right. If we can't trust one another, we
haven't got any business marrying."

"Yes. We must trust one another." She released his arm.

216 The Village

She looked at him intently, speculatively, with a cold and
curious contempt. "And you'll let mother believe . . ."

"You can trust me. You know that."

"Yes. I'm sure I can." Suddenly she held out her hand.
"Good-bye."

"Good-bye?"

She leaned against him again. She kissed him. "Careful,"
he said. "Somebody might . . ."

"Yes. Until later, then. Until I explain." She moved back,
looked at him absently, speculatively. "This is the last
trouble I'll ever give you, I expect. Maybe this will be
worth that to you. Good-bye."

That was Thursday afternoon. On Saturday morning, at
dawn, when Paul stopped his car before the dark house, she
seemed to materialize at once, already running across the
lawn. She sprang into the car before he could descend and
open the door, swirling down into the seat, leaning forward
and taut with urgency and flight like an animal. "Hurry!"
she said. "Hurry! Hurry! Hurry!"

But he held the car a moment longer. "Remember. I told
you what it meant if I came back. O.K.?"

"I heard you. I tell you I'm not afraid to risk it now.
Hurry! Hurry!"

And then, ten hours later, with the Mills City signs in-
creasing with irrevocable diminishment, she said, "So you
won't marry me? You won't?"

"I told you that all the time."

"Yes. But I didn't believe you. I didn't believe you. I
thought that when I — after — And now there is nothing else
I can do, is there?"

"No," he said.

"No," she repeated. Then she began to laugh, her voice
beginning to rise.

"Elly!" he said. "Stop it, now!"

Elly 2 1 7

"All right," she said. "I just happened to think about my
grandmother. I had forgotten her."

Pausing at the turn of the stair, Elly could hear Paul and
her uncle and aunt talking in the living-room below. She
stood quite still, in an attitude almost pensive, nun-like,
virginal, as though posing, as though she had escaped for the
moment into a place where she had forgotten where she came
from and where she intended to go. Then a clock in the hall
struck eleven, and she moved. She went on up the stairs
quietly and went to the door of her cousin's room, which
she was to occupy for the night, and entered. The grand-
mother sat in a low chair beside the dressing table littered
with the frivolous impedimenta of a young girl . . . bottles,
powder puffs, photographs, a row of dance programs stuck
into the mirror frame. Elly paused. They looked at one
another for a full moment before the old woman spoke:
"Not contented with deceiving your parents and your
friends, you must bring a Negro into my son's house as a
guest."

"Grandmother!" Elly said.

"Having me sit down to table with a negro man."

"Grandmother!" Elly cried in that thin whisper, her face
haggard and grimaced. She listened. Feet, voices were com-
ing up the stairs, her aunt's voice and Paul's. "Hush!" Elly
cried. "Hush!"

"What? What did you say?"

Elly ran to the chair and stooped and laid her fingers on
the old woman's thin and bloodless lips and, one furiously
importunate and the other furiously implacable, they glared
eye to eye across the hand while the feet and the voices
passed the door and ceased. Elly removed her hand. From
the row of them in the mirror frame she jerked one of the
cards with its silken cord and tiny futile pencil. She wrote

218 The Village

on the back of the card. He is not a negro he 'went to Va.
and Harvard and everywhere.

The grandmother read the card. She looked up. "I can
understand Harvard, but not Virginia. Look at his hair, his
fingernails, if you need proof. I don't. I know the name
which his people have borne for four generations." She re-
turned the card. "That man must not sleep under this roof."

Elly took another card and scrawled swiftly. He shall. He
is my guest. I asked him here. You are my grandmother you
'would not have me treat any guest that way not even a dog.

The grandmother read it. She sat with the card in her
hand. "He shall not drive me to Jefferson. I will not put a foot
in that car, and you shall not. We will go home on the train.
No blood of mine shall ride with him again."

Elly snatched another card, scrawled furiously. I will.
You cannot stop me. Try and stop me.

The grandmother read it. She looked at Elly. They glared
at one another. "Then I will have to tell your father."

Already Elly was writing again. She thrust the card at her
grandmother almost before the pencil had ceased; then in the
same motion she tried to snatch it back. But the grandmother
had already grasped the corner of it and now they glared
at one another, the card joining them like a queer umbilical
cord. "Let go!" Elly cried. "Let it go!"

"Turn loose," the grandmother said.

"Wait," Elly cried thinly, whispering, tugging at the card,
twisting it. "I made a mistake. I — " With an astonishing
movement, the grandmother bent the card up as Elly tried to
snatch it free.

"Ah," she said, then she read aloud: Tell him. What do
you know. "So. You didn't finish it, I see. What do I know?"

"Yes," Elly said. Then she began to speak in a fierce whis-
per: "Tell him! Tell him we went into a clump of trees
this morning and stayed there two hours. Tell him!" The

Elly 219

grandmother folded the card carefully and quietly. She rose.
"Grandmother!" Elly cried.

"My stick," the grandmother said. "There; against the
wall."

When she was gone Elly went to the door and turned the
latch and recrossed the room. She moved quietly, getting a
robe of her cousin's from the closet, and undressed, slowly,
pausing to yawn terrifically. "God, Pm tired," she said aloud,
yawning. She sat down at the dressing table and began to
manicure her nails with the cousin's equipment. There was
a small ivory clock on the dressing table. She glanced at it
now and then.

Then the clock below stairs struck midnight. She sat for
a moment longer with her head above her glittering nails,
listening to the final stroke. Then she looked at the ivory
one beside her. I'd hate to catch a train by you,' she thought.
As she looked at it her face began again to fill with the weary
despair of the afternoon. She went to the door and passed
into the dark hall. She stood in the darkness, on her naked
feet, her head bent, whimpering quietly to herself with
bemused and childish self-pity. 'Everything's against me,'
she thought. 'Everything.' When she moved, her feet made
no sound. She walked with her arms extended into the dark-
ness. She seemed to feel her eyeballs turning completely and
blankly back into her skull with the effort to see. She entered
the bathroom and locked the door. Then haste and urgency
took her again. She ran to the angle of the wall beyond
which the guest room was and stooped, cupping her voice
into the angle with her hands. "Paul!" she whispered, "Paul!"
holding her breath while the dying and urgent whisper
failed against the cold plaster. She stooped, awkward in the
borrowed robe, her blind eyes unceasing in the darkness with
darting despair. She ran to the lavatory , found the tap in the
darkness and tempered the drip of water to a minor but

220 The Village

penetrating monotony. Then she opened the door and stood
just within it. She heard the clock below stairs strike the
half hour. She had not stirred, shaking slowly as with cold,
when it struck one.

She heard Paul as soon as he left the guest room. She heard
him come down the hall; she heard his hand seek the switch.
When it clicked on, she found that her eyes were closed.

"What's this?" Paul said. He wore a suit of her uncle's
pajamas. "What the devil — "

"Lock the door," she whispered.

"Like hell. You fool. You damned fool."

"Paul!" She held him as though she expected him to flee.
She shut the door behind him and fumbled for the latch
when he caught her wrist.

"Let me out of here!" he whispered.

She leaned against him, shaking slowly, holding him. Her
eyes showed no iris at all. "She's going to tell daddy. She's
going to tell daddy to-morrow, Paul!" Between the whispers
the water dripped its unhurried minor note.

"Tell what? What does she know?"

"Put your arms around me, Paul."

"Hell, no. Let go. Let's get out of here."

"Yes. You can help it. You can keep her from telling
daddy."

"How help it? Damn it, let me go!"

"She will tell, but it won't matter then. Promise. Paul.
Say you will."

"Marry you? Is that what you are talking about? I told
you yesterday I wouldn't. Let me go, I tell you."

"All right. All right." She spoke in an eager whisper. "I
believe you now. I didn't at first, but I do now. You needn't
marry me, then. You can help it without marrying me." She
clung to him, her hair, her body, rich with voluptuous and
fainting promise. "You won't have to marry me. Will you
do it?"

Elly 221

"Do what?"

"Listen. You remember that curve with the little white
fence, where it is so far down to the bottom? Where if a car
went through that little fence. . . ."

"Yes. What about it?"

"Listen. You and she will be in the car. She won't know,
won't have time to suspect. And that little old fence wouldn't
stop anything and they will all say it was an accident. She
is old; it wouldn't take much; maybe even the shock and
you are young and maybe it won't even . . . Paul! Paul!"
With each word her voice seemed to faint and die, speaking
with a dying cadence out of urgency and despair while he
looked down at her blanched face, at her eyes filled with
desperate and voluptuous promise. "Paul!"

"And where will you be all this time?" She didn't stir,
her face like a sleepwalker's. "Oh. I see. You'll go home on
the train. Is that it?"

"Paul!" she said in that prolonged and dying whisper.
"Paul!"

In the instant of striking her his hand, as though refusing
of its own volition the office, opened and touched her face
in a long, shuddering motion almost a caress. Again, gripping
her by the back of the neck, he assayed to strike her; again
his hand, something, refused. When he flung her away she
stumbled backward into the wall. Then his feet ceased and
then the water began to fill the silence with its steady and
unhurried sound. After a while the clock below struck two,
and she moved wearily and heavily and closed the tap.

But that did not seem to stop the sound of the water. It
seemed to drip on into the silence where she lay rigid on
her back in bed, not sleeping, not even thinking. It dripped
on while behind the frozen grimace of her aching face she
got through the ritual of breakfast and of departure, the
grandmother between Paul and herself in the single seat. Even
the sound of the car could not drown it out, until suddenly

222 The Village

she realized what it was. 'It's the signboards/ she thought,
watching them as they diminished in retrograde. *I even
remember that one; now it's only about two miles. I'll wait
until the next one; then I will . . . now. Now.' "Paul," she
said. He didn't look at her. "Will you marry me?"

"No." Neither was she looking at his face. She was watch-
ing his hands as they jockeyed the wheel slightly and con-
stantly. Between them the grandmother sat, erect, rigid
beneath the archaic black bonnet, staring straight ahead like
a profile cut from parchment.

"I'm going to ask you just once more. Then it will be too
late. I tell you it will be too late then, Paul . . . Paul?"

"No, I tell you. You don't love me. I don't love you.
We've never said we did."

"All right. Not love, then. Will you marry me without it?
Remember, it \vill be too late."

"No. I will not."

"But why? Why, Paul?" He didn't answer. The car fled
on. Now it was the first sign which she had noticed; she
thought quietly, 'We must be almost there now. It is the
next curve.' She said aloud, speaking across the deafness of
the old woman between them: "Why not, Paul? If it's that
story about nigger blood, I don't believe it. I don't care."
Tes,' she thought, 'this is the curve.' The road entered the
curve, descending. She sat back, and then she found her
grandmother looking full at her. But she did not try now
to veil her face, her eyes, any more than she would have tried
to conceal her voice: "Suppose I have a child?"

"Suppose you do? I can't help it now. You should have
thought of that. Remember, you sent for me; I didn't ask
to come back."

"No. You didn't ask. I sent for you. I made you. And this
is the last time. Will you? Quick!"

"No."

Elly 223

"All right," she said. She sat back; at that instant the road
seemed to poise and pause before plunging steeply down-
ward beside the precipice; the white fence began to flicker
past. As Elly flung the robe aside she saw her grandmother
still watching her; as she lunged forward across the old
woman's knees they glared eye to eye — the haggard and
desperate girl and the old woman whose hearing had long
since escaped everything and whose sight nothing escaped
— for a profound instant of despairing ultimatum and im-
placable refusal. "Then die!" she cried into the old woman's
face; "die!" grasping at the wheel as Paul tried to fling her
back. But she managed to get her elbow into the wheel
spokes with all her weight on it, sprawling across her grand-
mother's body, holding the wheel hard over as Paul struck
her on the mouth with his fist. "Oh," she screamed, "you hit
me. You hit me!" When the car struck the railing it flung
her free, so that for an instant she lay lightly as an alighting
bird upon Paul's chest, her mouth open, her eyes round with
shocked surprise. "You hit me!" she wailed. Then she was
falling free, alone in a complete and peaceful silence like a
vacuum. Paul's face, her grandmother, the car, had disap-
peared, vanished as though by magic; parallel with her eyes
the shattered ends of white railing, the crumbling edge of the
precipice where dust whispered and a faint gout of it hung
like a toy balloon, rushed mutely skyward.

Overhead somewhere a sound passed, dying away — the
snore of an engine, the long hissing of tires in gravel, then
the wind sighed in the trees again, shivering the crests against
the sky. Against the bole of one of them the car lay in an
inextricable and indistinguishable mass, and Elly sat in a
litter of broken glass, staring dully at it. "Something hap-
pened," she whimpered. "He hit me. And now they are
dead; it's me that's hurt, and nobody will come." She moaned
a little, whimpering. Then with an air of dazed astonish-

224 The Village

ment she raised her hand. The palm was red and wet. She
sat whimpering quietly, digging stupidly at her palm.
"There's glass all in it and I can't even see it," she said, whim-
pered, gazing at her palm while the warm blood stained
slowly down upon her skirt. Again the sound rushed steadily
past high overhead, and died away. She looked up, following
it. "There goes another one," she whimpered. "They won't
even stop to see if I am hurt."

Uncle Willy

I KNOW what they said. They said I didn't run away from
home but that I was tolled away by a crazy man who, if I
hadn't killed him first, would have killed me inside another
week. But if they had said that the women, the good women
in Jefferson had driven Uncle Willy out of town and I fol-
lowed him and did what I did because I knew that Uncle
Willy was on his last go-round and this time when they got
him again it would be for good and forever, they would have
been right. Because I wasn't tolled away and Uncle Willy
wasn't crazy, not even after all they had done to him. I
didn't have to go; I didn't have to go any more than Uncle
Willy had to invite me instead of just taking it for granted
that I wanted to come. I went because Uncle Willy was the
finest man I ever knew, because even women couldn't beat
him, because in spite of them he wound up his life getting
fun out of being alive and he died doing the thing that was
the most fun of all because I was there to help him. And
that's something that most men and even most women too
don't get to do, not even the women that call meddling with
other folks' lives fun.

He wasn't anybody's uncle, but all of us, and grown people
too, called him (or thought of him) as Uncle Willy. He
didn't have any kin at all except a sister in Texas married
to an oil millionaire. He lived by himself in a little old neat

"5

226 * The Village

white house where he had been born on the edge of town,
he and an old nigger named Job Wylie that was older than
he was even, that cooked and kept the house and was the
porter at the drugstore which Uncle Willy's father had
established and which Uncle Willy ran without any other
help than old Job; and during the twelve or fourteen years
(the life of us as children and then boys), while he just used
dope, we saw a lot of him. We liked to go to his store because
it was always cool and dim and quiet inside because he never
washed the windows; he said the reason was that he never
had to bother to dress them because nobody could see in
anyway, and so the heat couldn't get in either. And he never
had any customers except country people buying patent
medicines that were already in bottles, and niggers buying
cards and dice, because nobody had let him fill a prescription
in forty years I reckon, and he never had any soda fountain
trade because it was old Job who washed the glasses and
mixed the syrups and made the ice cream ever since Uncle
Willy's father started the business in eighteen-fifty-some-
thing and so old Job couldn't see very well now, though
papa said he didn't think that old Job took dope too, it was
from breathing day and night the air which Uncle Willy
had just exhaled.

But the ice cream tasted all right to us, especially when we
came in hot from the ball games. We had a league of three
teams in town and Uncle Willy would give the prize, a ball
or a bat or a mask, for each game though he would never
come to see us play, so after the game both teams and maybe
all three would go to the store to watch the winner get the
prize. And we would eat the ice cream and then we would
all go behind the prescription case and watch Uncle Willy
light the little alcohol stove and fill the needle and roll his
sleeve up over the little blue myriad punctures starting at
his elbow and going right on up into his shirt. And the next

Uncle Willy 227

day would be Sunday and we would wait in our yards and
fall in with him as he passed from house to house and go on
to Sunday school, Uncle Willy with us, in the same class
with us, sitting there while we recited. Mr. Barbour from the
Sunday school never called on him. Then we would finish
the lesson and we would talk about baseball until the bell
rang and Uncle Willy still not saying anything, just sitting
there all neat and clean, with his clean collar and no tie and
weighing about a hundred and ten pounds and his eyes
behind his glasses kind of all run together like broken eggs.
Then we would all go to the store and eat the ice cream
that was left over from Saturday and then go behind the
prescription case and watch him again: the little stove and
his Sunday shirt rolled up and the needle going slow into
his blue arm and somebody would say, "Don't it hurt?" and
he would say, "No. I like it."

II

THEN THEY made him quit dope. He had been using it for
forty years, he told us once, and now he was sixty and he
had about ten years more at the outside, only he didn't tell
us that because he didn't need to tell even fourteen-year-old
boys that. But they made him quit. It didn't take them long.
It began one Sunday morning and it was finished by the
next Friday; we had just sat down in our class and Mr. Bar-
bour had just begun, when all of a sudden Reverend Schultz,
the minister, was there, leaning over Uncle Willy and already
hauling him out of his seat when we looked around, hauling
him up and saying in that tone in which preachers speak to
fourteen-year-old boys that I don't believe even pansy boys
like: "Now, Brother Christian, I know you will hate to
leave Brother Barbour's class, but let's you and I go in and
join Brother Miller and the men and hear what he can tell

228 The Village

us on this beautiful and heartwarming text," and Uncle
Willy still trying to hold back and looking around at us
with his run-together eyes blinking and saying plainer than
if he had spoke it: "What's this? What's this, fellows? What
are they fixing to do to me?"

We didn't know any more than he did. We just finished
the lesson; we didn't talk any baseball that day; and we
passed the alcove where Mr. Miller's men's Bible class met,
with Reverend Schultz sitting in the middle of them like he
did every Sunday, like he was just a plain man like the rest
of them yet kind of bulging out from among the others like
he didn't have to move or speak to keep them reminded that
he wasn't a plain man; and I would always think about April
Fool's one year when Miss Callaghan called the roll and then
stepped down from her desk and said, "Now I'm going to
be a pupil today," and took a vacant seat and called out a
name and made them go to her desk and hold the lesson and
it would have been fun if you could have just quit remem-
bering that tomorrow wouldn't be April Fool's and the day
after that wouldn't be either. And Uncle Willy was sitting
by Reverend Schultz looking littler than ever, and I thought
about one day last summer when they took a country man
named Bundren to the asylum at Jackson but he wasn't too
crazy not to know where he was going, sitting there in the
coach window handcuffed to a fat deputy sheriff that was
smoking a cigar.

Then Sunday school was over and we went out to wait
for him, to go to the store and eat the ice cream. And he
didn't come out. He didn't come out until church was over
too, the first time that he had ever stayed for church that
any of us knew of — that anybody knew of, papa told me
later — coming out with Mrs. Merridew on one side of him
and Reverend Schultz on the other still holding him by the
arm and he looking around at us again with his eyes saying

Uncle Willy 229

again only desperate now: "Fellows, what's this? What's
this, fellows?" and Reverend Schultz shoving him into Mrs.
Merridew's car and Airs. Merridew saying, loud, like she was
in the pulpit: "Now, Mr. Christian, I'm going to take you
right out to my house and I'm going to fix you a nice glass
of cool lemonade and then we will have a nice chicken dinner
and then you are going to take a nice nap in my hammock
and then Brother and Sister Schultz are coming out and we
will have some nice ice cream," and Uncle Willy saying,
"No. Wait, ma'am, wait! Wait! I got to go to the store and
fill a prescription I promised this morning — "

So they shoved him into the car and him looking back at
us where we stood there; he went out of sight like that,
sitting beside Mrs. Merridew in the car like Darl Bundren
and the deputy on the train, and I reckon she was holding
his wrist and I reckon she never needed any handcuffs and
Uncle Willy giving us that single look of amazed and des-
perate despair.

Because now he was already an hour past the time for his
needle and that afternoon when he finally slipped away from
Mrs. Merridew he was five hours past it and so he couldn't
even get the key into the lock, and so Mrs. Merridew and
Reverend Schultz caught him and this time he wasn't talking
or looking either: he was trying to get away like a half-wild
cat tries to get away. They took him to his home and Mrs.
Merridew telegraphed his sister in Texas and Uncle Willy
didn't come to town for three days because Mrs. Merridew
and Mrs. Hovis took turn about staying in the house with
him day and night until his sister could get there. That was
vacation then and we played the game on Monday and that
afternoon the store was still locked and Tuesday it was still
locked, and so it was not until Wednesday afternoon and
Uncle Willy was running fast.

He didn't have any shirt on and he hadn't shaved and he

230 The Village

could not get the key into the lock at all, panting and whim-
pering and saying, "She went to sleep at last; she went to
sleep at last," until one of us took the key and unlocked the
door. We had to light the little stove too and fill the needle
and this time it didn't go into his arm slow, it looked like
he was trying to jab it clean through the bone. He didn't go
back home. He said he wouldn't need anything to sleep on
and he gave us the money and let us out the back door and
we bought the sandwiches and the bottle of coffee from the
cafe and we left him there.

Then the next day, it was Mrs. Merridew and Reverend
Schultz and three more ladies; they had the marshal break in
the door and Mrs. Merridew holding Uncle Willy by the
back of the neck and shaking him and kind of whispering,
"You little wretch! You little wretch! Slip off from me, will
you?" and Reverend Schultz saying, "Now, Sister; now,
Sister; control yourself," and the other ladies hollering Mr.
Christian and Uncle Willy and Willy, according to how old
they were or how long they had lived in Jefferson. It didn't
take them long.

The sister got there from Texas that night and we would
walk past the house and see the ladies on the front porch or
going in and out, and now and then Reverend Schultz kind
of bulging out from among them like he would out of Mr.
Miller's Bible class, and we could crawl up behind the hedge
and hear them through the window, hear Uncle Willy cry-
ing and cussing and fighting to get out of the bed and the
ladies saying, "Now, Mr. Christian; now, Uncle Willy,"
and "Now, Bubber," too, since his sister was there; and
Uncle Willy crying and praying and cussing. And then it
was Friday, and he gave up. We could hear them holding
him in the bed; I reckon this was his last go-round, because
none of them had time to talk now; and then we heard him,
his voice weak but clear and his breath going in and out.

Uncle Willy 231

"Wait," he said. "Wait! I will ask it one more time. Won't
you please quit? Won't you please go away? Won't you
please go to hell and just let me come on at my own gait?"

"No, Mr. Christian," Mrs. Merridew said. "We are doing
this to save you."

For a minute we didn't hear anything. Then we heard
Uncle Willy lay back in the bed, kind of flop back.

"All right," he said. "All right."

It was like one of those sheep they would sacrifice back
in the Bible. It was like it had climbed up onto the altar
itself and flopped onto its back with its throat held up and
said: "All right. Come on and get it over with. Cut my
damn throat and go away and let me lay quiet in the fire."

Ill

HE WAS SICK for a long time. They took him to Memphis
and they said that he was going to die. The store stayed
locked all the time now, and after a few weeks we didn't
even keep up the league. It wasn't just the balls and the bats.
It wasn't that. We would pass the store and look at the big
old lock on it and at the windows you couldn't even see
through, couldn't even see inside where we used to eat the
ice cream and tell him who beat and who made the good
plays and him sitting there on his stool with the little stove
burning and the dope boiling and bubbling and the needle
waiting in his hand, looking at us with his eyes blinking
and all run together behind his glasses so you couldn't even
tell where the pupil was like you can in most eyes. And the
niggers and the country folks that used to trade with him
coming up and looking at the lock too, and asking us how
he was and when he would come home and open up again.
Because even after the store opened again, they would not
trade with the clerk that Mrs. Merridew and Reverend

232 The Village

Schultz put in the store. Uncle Willy's sister said not to
bother about the store, to let it stay shut because she would
take care of Uncle Willy if he got well. But Mrs. Merridew
said no, she not only aimed to cure Uncle Willy, she was
going to give him a complete rebirth, not only into real
Christianity but into the practical world too, with a place
in it waiting for him so he could hold up his head not only
with honor but pride too among his fellow men; she said
that at first her only hope had been to fix it so he would not
have to face his Maker slave body and soul to morphine,
but now since his constitution was stronger than anybody
could have believed, she was going to see that he assumed
that position in the world which his family's name entitled
him to before he degraded it.

She and Reverend Schultz found the clerk. He had
been in Jefferson about six months. He had letters
to the church, but nobody except Reverend Schultz and
Mrs. Merridew knew anything about him. That is, they
made him the clerk in Uncle Willy's store; nobody else
knew anything about him at all. But Uncle Willy's old
customers wouldn't trade with him. And we didn't either.
Not that we had much trade to give him and we certainly
didn't expect him to give us any ice cream and I don't
reckon we would have taken it if he had offered it to us.
Because it was not Uncle Willy, and pretty soon it wasn't
even the same ice cream because the first thing the clerk
did after he washed the windows was to fire old Job, only
old Job refused to quit. He stayed around the store any-
how, mumbling to himself and the clerk would run him
out the front door and old Job would go around to the
back and come in and the clerk would find him again and
cuss him, whispering, cussing old Job good even if he did
have letters to the church; he went and swore out a war-
rant and the marshal told old Job he would have to stay out

Uncle Willy 233

of the store. Then old Job moved across the street. He
would sit on the curb all day where he could watch the
door and every time the clerk came in sight old Job would
holler, "I ghy tell um! I ghy do hit!" So we even quit pass-
ing the store. We would cut across the corner not to pass
it, with the windows clean now and the new town trade the
clerk had built up — he had a lot of trade now — going in
and out, just stopping long enough to ask old Job about
Uncle Willy, even though we had already got what news
came from Memphis about him every day and we knew
that old Job would riot know, would not be able to get it
straight even if someone told him, since he never did believe
that Uncle Willy was sick, he just believed that Mrs. Merri-
dew had taken him away somewhere by main force and
was holding him in another bed somewhere so he couldn't
get up and come back home; and old Job sitting on the
curb and blinking up at us with his little watery red eyes
like Uncle Willy would and saying, UI ghy tell um! Holting
him up dar whilst whipper-snappin' trash makin' free wid
Marse Hoke Christian's sto. I ghy tell um!"

IV

UNCLE WILLY didn't die. One day he came home with his
skin the color of tallow and weighing about ninety pounds
now and with his eyes like broken eggs still but dead eggs,
eggs that had been broken so long now that they didn't
even smell dead any more — until you looked at them and
saw that they were anything in the world except dead. That
was after he got to know us again. I don't mean that he had
forgotten about us exactly. It was like he still liked us as
boys, only he had never seen us before and so he would have
to learn our names and which faces the names belonged to.
His sister had gone back to Texas now, because Mrs. Merri-

234 The Village

dew was going to look after him until he was completely
recovered, completely cured. Yes. Cured.

I remember that first afternoon when he came to town
and we walked into the store and Uncle Willy looked at the
clean windows that you could see through now and at the
town customers that never had traded with him, and at
the clerk and said, "You're my clerk, hey?" and the clerk
begun to talk about Mrs. Merridew and Reverend Schultz
and Uncle Willy said, "All right, all right," and now he ate
some ice cream too, standing at the counter with us like he
was a customer too and still looking around the store while
he ate the ice cream, with those eyes that were not dead at
all and he said, "Looks like you been getting more work out
of my damned old nigger than I could/' and the clerk began
to say something else about Mrs. Merridew and Uncle Willy
said, "All right, all right. Just get a holt of Job right away
and tell him I am going to expect him to be here every day
and that I want him to keep this store looking like this from
now on." Then we went on behind the prescription case,
with Uncle Willy looking around here too, at how the clerk
had it neated up, with a big new lock on the cabinet where
the drugs and such were kept, with those eyes that wouldn't
anybody call dead, I don't care who he was, and said, "Step
up there and tell that fellow I want my keys." But it wasn't
the stove and the needle. Mrs. Merridew had busted both
of them that day. But it wasn't that anyway, because the
clerk came back and begun to talk about Mrs. Merridew
and Reverend Schultz, and Uncle Willy listening and say-
ing, "All right, all right," and we never had seen him laugh
before and his face didn't change now but we knew that he
was laughing behind it. Then we went out. He turned sharp
off the square, down Nigger Row to Sonny Barger's store
and I took the money and bought the Jamaica ginger from
Sonny and caught up with them and we went home with

Uncle Willy 235

Uncle Willy and we sat in the pasture while he drank the
Jamaica ginger and practiced our names some more.

And that night we met him where he said. He had the
wheelbarrow and the crowbar and we broke open the back
door and then the cabinet with the new lock on it and got
the can of alcohol and carried it to Uncle Willy's and buried
it in the barn. It had almost three gallons in it and he didn't
come to town at all for four weeks and he was sick again,
and Mrs. Merridew storming into the house, jerking out
drawers and flinging things out of closets and Uncle Willy
lying in the bed and watching her with those eyes that were
a long way from being dead. But she couldn't find anything
because it was all gone now, and besides she didn't know
what it was she was looking for because she was looking for
a needle. And the night Uncle Willy was up again we took
the crowbar and went back to the store and when we went
to the cabinet we found that it was already open and Uncle
Willy's stool sitting in the door and a quart bottle of alcohol
on the stool in plain sight, and that was all. And then I knew
that the clerk knew who got the alcohol before but I didn't
know why he hadn't told Mrs. Merridew until two years
later.

I didn't know that for two years, and Uncle Willy a year
now going to Memphis every Saturday in the car his sister
had given him. I wrote the letter with Uncle Willy looking
over my shoulder and dictating, about how his health was
improving but not as fast as the doctor seemed to want and
that the doctor said he ought not to walk back and forth to
the store and so a car, not an expensive car, just a small car
that he could drive himself or maybe find a negro boy to
drive for him if his sister thought he ought not to: and she
sent the money and he got a burr-headed nigger boy about
my size named Secretary to drive it for him. That is, Secre-
tary said he could drive a car; certainly he and Uncle Willy

236 The Village

both learned on the night trips they would make back into
the hill country to buy corn whisky and Secretary learned to
drive in Memphis pretty quick, too, because they went every
Saturday, returning Monday morning with Uncle Willy
insensible on the back seat, with his clothes smelling of that
smell whose source I was not to discover at first hand for
some years yet, and two or three half-empty bottles and a
little notebook full of telephone numbers and names like
Lorine and Billie and Jack. I didn't know it for two years,
not until that Monday morning when the sheriff came and
padlocked and sealed what was left of Uncle Willy's stock
and when they tried to find the clerk they couldn't even
find out what train he had left town on; a hot morning in
July and Uncle Willy sprawled out on the back seat, and on
the front seat with Secretary a woman twice as big as Uncle
Willy, in a red hat and a pink dress and a dirty white fur
coat over the back of the seat and two straw suitcases on the
fenders, with hair the color of a brand new brass hydrant
bib and her cheeks streaked with mascara and caked powder
where she had sweated.

It was worse than if he had started dope again. You would
have thought he had brought smallpox to town. I remember
how when Mrs. Merridew telephoned Mamma that after-
noon you could hear her from away out at her house, over
the wire, clean out to the back door and the kitchen: "Mar-
ried! Married! Whore! Whore! Whore!" like the clerk used
to cuss old Job, and so maybe the church can go just so
far and maybe the folks that are in it are the ones that know
the best or are entitled to say when to disconnect religion
for a minute or two. And Papa was cussing too, not cussing
anybody; I knew he was not cussing Uncle Willy or even
Uncle Willy's new wife, just like I knew that I wished Mrs.
Merridew could have been there to hear him. Only I reckon
if she had been there she couldn't have heard anything be-

Uncle Willy 237

cause they said she still had on a house dress when she went
and snatched Reverend Schultz into her car and went out
to Uncle Willy's, where he was still in bed like always on
Monday and Tuesday, and his new wife run Mrs. Merridew
and Reverend Schultz out of the house with the wedding
license like it was a gun or a knife. And I remember how all
that afternoon — Uncle Willy lived on a little quiet side
street where the other houses were all little new ones that
country people who had moved to town within the last fif-
teen years, like mail carriers and little storekeepers, lived —
how all that afternoon mad-looking ladies with sun-bonnets
on crooked came busting out of that little quiet street
dragging the little children and the grown girls with them,
heading for the mayor's office and Reverend Schultz's house,
and how the young men and the boys that didn't work and
some of the men that did would drive back and forth past
Uncle Willy's house to look at her sitting on the porch smok-
ing cigarettes and drinking something out of a glass; and how
she came down town the next day to shop, in a black hat
now and a red-and-white striped dress so that she looked
like a great big stick of candy and three times as big as
Uncle Willy now, walking along the street with men popping
out of the stores when she passed like she was stepping on
a line of spring triggers and both sides of her behind kind
of pumping up and down inside the dress until somebody
hollered, threw back his head and squalled: "YIPPEEE!"
like that and she kind of twitched her behind without even
stopping and then they hollered sure enough.

And the next day the wire came from his sister, and Papa
for the lawyer and Mrs. Merridew for the witness went out
there and Uncle Willy's wife showed them the license and
told them to laugh that off, that Manuel Street or not she
was married as good and tight as any high-nosed bitch in
Jefferson or anywhere else and Papa saying, "Now, Mrs.

238 The Village

Merridew; now, Mrs. Christian," and he told Uncle Willy's
wife how Uncle Willy was bankrupt now and might even
lose the house too, and his wife said how about that sister
in Texas, was Papa going to tell her that the oil business was
bankrupt too and not to make her laugh. So they telegraphed
the sister again and the thousand dollars came and they had
to give Uncle Willy's wife the car too. She went back to
Memphis that same afternoon, driving across the square with
the straw suitcases, in a black lace dress now and already
beginning to sweat again under her new makeup because it
was still hot, and stopping where the men were waiting at
the post office for the afternoon mail and she said, "Come
on up to Manuel Street and see me sometime and I will show
you hicks what you and this town can do to yourselves and
one another."

And that afternoon Mrs. Merridew moved back into
Uncle Willy's house and Papa said the letter she wrote
Uncle Willy's sister had eleven pages to it because Papa said
she would never forgive Uncle Willy for getting bankrupted.
We could hear her from behind the hedge: "You're crazy,
Mr. Christian; crazy. I have tried to save you and make
something out of you besides a beast but now my patience
is exhausted. I am going to give you one more chance. I am
going to take you to Keeley and if that fails, I am going to
.take you myself to your sister and force her to commit you
to an asylum." And the sister sent papers from Texas declar-
ing that Uncle Willy was incompetent and making Mrs.
Merridew his guardian and trustee, and Mrs. Merridew took
him to the Keeley in Memphis. And that was all.

V

THAT is, I reckon they thought that that was all, that this
lime Uncle Willy would surely die. Because even Papa

Uncle Willy 239

thought that he was crazy now because even Papa said that
if it hadn't been for Uncle Willy I would not have run
away, and therefore I didn't run away, I was tolled away
by a lunatic; it wasn't Papa, it was Uncle Robert that said
that he wasn't crazy because any man who could sell Jeffer-
son real estate for cash while shut up in r, Keeley institute
wasn't crazy or even drunk. Because they didn't even know
that he was out of Keeley, even Mrs. Merridew didn't know
it until he was gone two days and they couldn't find him.
They never did find him or find out how he got out and
I didn't either until I got the letter from him to take the
Memphis bus on a certain day and he would meet me at a
stop on the edge of Memphis. I didn't even realize that I had
not seen Secretary or old Job either in two weeks. But he
didn't toll me away. I went because I wanted to, because he
was the finest man I ever knew, because he had had fun all
his life in spite of what they had tried to do to him or with
him, and I hoped that maybe if I could stay with him a
while I could learn how to, so I could still have fun too when
I had to get old. Or maybe I knew more than that, without
knowing it, like I knew that I would do anything he asked
me to do, no matter what it was, just like I helped him break
into the store for the alcohol when he took it for granted
that I would without asking me to at all and then helped
him hide it from Mrs. Merridew. Maybe I even knew what
old Job was going to do. Not what he did do, but that he
would do it if the occasion arose, and that this would have
to be Uncle Willy's last go-round and if I wasn't there it
would be just him against all the old terrified and timid cling-
ing to dull and rule-ridden breathing which Jefferson was to
him and which, even though he had escaped Jefferson, old
Job still represented.

So I cut some grass that week and I had almost two dollars.
I took the bus on the day he said and he was waiting for me

240 The Village

at the edge of town, in a Ford now without any top on it and
you could still read the chalk letters, $85 cash on the wind-
shield, and a brand new tent folded up in the back of it and
Uncle Willy and old Job in the front seat, and Uncle Willy
looked fine with a checked cap new except for a big oil
stain, with the bill turned round behind and a pair of goggles
cocked up on the front of it and his celluloid collar freshly
washed and no tie in it and his nose peeling with sunburn
and his eyes bright behind his glasses. I would have gone
with him anywhere; I would do it over again right now,
knowing what was going to happen. He would not have to
ask me now any more than he did then. So I got on top of the
tent and we didn't go toward town, we went the other way.
I asked where we were going but he just said wait, rushing
the little car along like he couldn't get there quick enough
himself, and I could tell from his voice that this was fine, this
was the best yet, better than anybody else could have thought
about doing, and old Job hunched down in the front seat,
holding on with both hands and yelling at Uncle Willy about
going so fast. Yes. Maybe i knew from old Job even then
that Uncle Willy may have escaped Jefferson but he had
just dodged it; he hadn't gotten away.

Then we came to the sign, the arrow that said Airport, and
we turned and I said: "What? What is it?" but Uncle Willy
just said: "Wait; just wait," like he couldn't hardly wait
himself, hunched over the wheel with his white hair blow-
ing under his cap and his collar riding up behind so you
could see his neck between the collar and the shirt; and old
Job saying (Oh yes, I could tell even then): "He got hit, all
right. He done done hit. But I done tole him. Nemmine.
I done warned him." Then we came to the airport and Uncle
Willy stopped quick and pointed up without even getting
out and said, "Look."

It was an airplane flying around and Uncle Willy running

Uncle Willy 241

up and down the edge of the field waving his handkerchief
until it saw him and came down and landed and rolled up to
us, a little airplane with a two-cylinder engine. It was Secre-
tary, in another new checked cap and goggles like Uncle
Willy's and they told me how Uncle Willy had bought one
for old Job too but old Job wouldn't wear it. And that night
— we stayed in a little tourist camp about two miles away and
he had a cap and goggles all ready for me too; and then I
knew why they hadn't been able to find him — Uncle Willy
told me how he had bought the airplane with some of the
money he had sold his house for after his sister saved it
because she had been born in it too, but that Captain Bean
at the airport wouldn't teach him to run it himself because
he would need a permit from a doctor ("By God," Uncle
Willy said, "damn if these Republicans and Democrats and
XYZ's ain't going to have it soon where a man can't even
flush the toilet in his own bathroom.") and he couldn't go
to the doctor because the doctor might want to send him
back to the Keeley or tell Mrs. Merridew where he was. So
he just let Secretary learn to run it first and now Secretary
had been running it for two weeks, which was almost four-
teen days longer than he had practiced on the car before
they started out with it. So Uncle Willy bought the car and
tent and camping outfit yesterday and tomorrow we were
going to start. We would go first to a place named Renfro
where nobody knew us and where there was a big pasture
that Uncle Willy had found out about and we would stay
there a week while Secretary taught Uncle Willy to run the
airplane. Then we would head west. When we ran out of
the house money we would stop at a town and take up pas-
sengers and make enough to buy gasoline and food to get
to the next town, Uncle Willy and Secretary in the airplane
and me and old Job in the car; and old Job sitting in a chair
against the wall, blinking at Uncle Willy with his little weak

242 The Village

red sullen eyes, and Uncle Willy reared up on the cot with
his cap and goggles still on and his collar without any tie (it
wasn't fastened to his shirt at all: just buttoned around his
neck) sometimes sideways and sometimes even backward
like an Episcopal minister's, and his eyes bright behind his
glasses and his voice bright and fine. "And by Christmas we
will be in California!" he said. "Think of that. Calif ornia!"

VI

So HOW could they say that I had to be tolled away? How
could they? I suppose I knew then that it wouldn't work,
couldn't work, that it was too fine to be true. I reckon I even
knew how it was going to end just from the glum way Secre-
tary acted whenever Uncle Willy talked about learning to
run the airplane himself, just as I knew from the way old Job
looked at Uncle Willy, not what he did of course, but what
he would do if the occasion arose. Because I was the other
white one. I was white, even if old Job and Secretary were
both older than me, so it would be all right; I could do it all
right. It was like I knew even then that, no matter what
might happen to him, he wouldn't ever die and I thought
that if I could just learn to live like he lived, no matter what
might happen to me I wouldn't ever die either.

So we left the next morning, just after daylight because
there was another fool rule that Secretary would have to
stay in sight of the field until they gave him a license to go
away. We filled the airplane with gas and Secretary went
up in it just like he was going up to practice. Then Uncle
Willy got us into the car quick because he said the airplane
could make sixty miles an hour and so Secretary would be
at Renfro a long while before we got there. But when we
got to Renfro Secretary wasn't there and we put the tent up
and ate dinner and he still didn't come and Uncle Willy

Uncle Willy 243

beginning to cuss and we ate supper and dark came but Sec-
retary didn't and Uncle Willy was cussing good now. He
didn't come until the next day. We heard him and ran out
and watched him fly right over us, coming from the opposite
direction of Memphis, going fast and us all hollering and
waving. But he went on, with Uncle Willy jumping up and
down and cussing, and we were loading the tent into the car
to try to catch him when he came back. We didn't hear him
at all now and we could see the propeller because it wasn't
running and it looked like Secretary wasn't even going to
light in the pasture but he was going to light in some trees
on the edge of it. But he skinned by them and kind of
bumped down and we ran up and found him still sitting in
the airplane with his eyes closed and his face the color of
wood ashes and he said, "Captin, will you please tell me

where to find Ren " before he even opened his eyes to

see who we were. He said he had landed seven times yester-
day and it wouldn't be Renfro and they would tell him how
to get to Renfro and he would go there and that wouldn't
be Renfro either and he had slept in the airplane last night
and he hadn't eaten since we left Memphis because he had
spent the three dollars Uncle Willy gave him for gasoline and
if he hadn't run out of gas when he did he wouldn't never
have found us.

Uncle Willy wanted me to go to town and get some more
gas so he could start learning to run it right away but Secre-
tary wouldn't. He just refused. He said the airplane belonged
to Uncle Willy and he reckoned he belonged to Uncle Willy
too, leastways until he got back home, but that he had flown
all he could stand for a while. So Uncle Willy started the
next morning.

I thought for a while that I would have to throw old Job
down and hold him and him hollering, "Don't you git in dat
thing!" and still hollering, "I ghy tell um! I ghy tell urn!"

244 The Village

while we watched the airplane with Secretary and Uncle
Willy in it kind of jump into the air and then duck down
like Uncle Willy was trying to take the short cut to China
and then duck up again and get to going pretty straight at
last and fly around the pasture and then turn down to land,
and every day old Job hollering at Uncle Willy and field
hands coming up out of the fields and folks in wagons and
walking stopping in the road to watch them and the airplane
coming down, passing us with Uncle Willy and Secretary
side by side and looking exactly alike, I don't mean in the
face but exactly alike like two tines of a garden fork look
exactly like just before they chop into the ground; we could
see Secretary's eyes and his mouth run out so you could
almost hear him saying, "Hooooooooo!" and Uncle Willy's
glasses shining and his hair blowing from under his cap and
his celluloid collar that he washed every night before he
went to bed and no tie in it and they would go by, fast, and
old Job hollering, "You git outer dar! You git outer dat
thing!" and we could hear Secretary too: "Turn hit loose,
Unker Willy! Turn hit loosel " and the airplane would go on,
ducking up one second and down the next and with one wing
higher than the other one second and lower die next and
then it would be traveling sideways and maybe it would hit
the ground sideways the first time, with a kind of crashing
sound and the dust spurting up and then bounce off again
and Secretary hollering, "Unker Willy! Turn loose!" and at
night in the tent Uncle Willy's eyes would still be shining
and he would be too excited to stop talking and go to sleep
and I don't believe he even remembered that he had not
taken a drink since he first thought about buying the air-
plane.

Oh yes, I know what they said about me after it was all
over, what Papa said when he and Mrs. Merridew got there
that morning, about me being the white one, almost a man,

Uncle Willy 245

and Secretary and old Job just irresponsible niggers, yet it
was old Job and Secretary who tried to prevent him. Because
that was it; that was what they couldn't understand.

I remember the last night and Secretary and old Job both
working on him, when old Job finally made Secretary tell
Uncle Willy that he would never learn to fly, and Uncle
Willy stopped talking and stood up and looked at Secretary.
"Didn't you learn to run it in two weeks?" he said. Secretary
said yes. "You, a damn, trifling, worthless, ignorant, burr-
headed nigger?" and Secretary said yes. "And me that grad-
uated from a university and ran a fifteen-thousand-dollar
business for forty years, yet you tell me I can't learn to run
a damn little fifteen-hundred-dollar airplane?" Then he
looked at me. "Don't you believe I can run it?" he said. And
I looked at him and I said, "Yes. I believe you can do any-
thing."

VII

AND NOW I can't tell them. I can't say it. Papa told me once
that somebody said that if you know it you can say it. Or
maybe the man that said that didn't count fourteen-year-old
boys. Because I must have known it was going to happen.
And Uncle Willy must have known it too, known that the
moment would come. It was like we both had known it and
we didn't even have to compare notes, tell one another that
we did: he not needing to say that day in Memphis, "Come
with me so you will be there when I will need you," and me
not needing to say, "Let me come so I can be there when
you will."

Because old Job telephoned Mrs. Merridew. He waited
until we were asleep and slipped out and walked all the way
to town and telephoned her; he didn't have any money and
he probably never telephoned in his life before, yet he tele-

246 The Village

phoned her and the next morning he came up running in the
dew (the town, the telephone, was five miles away) just as
Secretary was getting the engine started and I knew what he
had done even before he got close enough to holler, running
and stumbling along slow across the pasture, hollering, "Holt
um! Holt um! Dey'll be here any minute! Jest holt um ten
minutes en dey'll be here," and I knew and I ran and met him
and now I did hold him and him fighting and hitting at me
and still hollering at Uncle Willy in the airplane. "You tele-
phoned?" I said. "Her? Her? Told her where he is?"

"Yes," Uncle Job hollered. "En she say she gonter git yo
pappy and start right away and be here by six o'clock," and
me holding him; he felt like a handful of scrawny dried sticks
and I could hear his lungs wheezing and I could feel his heart,
and Secretary came up running too and old Job begun to
holler at Secretary, "Git him outer dar! Dey comin! Dey be
here any minute if you can jest holt um!" and Secretary
saying, "Which? Which?" and old Job hollered at him to
run and hold the airplane and Secretary turned and I tried to
grab his leg but I couldn't and I could see Uncle Willy look-
ing toward us and Secretary running toward the airplane
and I got onto my knees and waved and I was hollering too.
I don't reckon Uncle Willy could hear me for the engine.
But I tell you he didn't need to, because we knew, we both
knew; and so I knelt there and held old Job on the ground
and we saw the airplane start, with Secretary still running
after it, and jump into the air and duck down and then jump
up again and then it looked like it had stopped high in the
air above the trees where we thought Secretary was fixing to
land that first day before it ducked down beyond them and
went out of sight and Secretary was already running and so
it was only me and Uncle Job that had to get up and start.

Oh, yes, I know what they said about me; I knew it all that
afternoon while we were going home with the hearse in front

Uncle Willy 247

and Secretary and old Job in the Ford next and Papa and me
in our car coming last and Jefferson getting nearer and
nearer; and then all of a sudden I began to cry. Because the
dying wasn't anything, it just touched the outside of you
that you wore around with you for comfort and convenience
like you do your clothes: it was because the old garments,
the clothes that were not worth anything had betrayed one
of the two of us and the one betrayed was me, and Papa with
his other arm around my shoulders now, saying, "Now,
now; I didn't mean that. You didn't do it. Nobody blames
you."

You see? That was it. I did help Uncle Willy. He knows
I did. He knows he couldn't have done it without me. He
knows I did; we didn't even have to look at one another
when he went. That's it.

And now they will never understand, not even Papa, and
there is only me to try to tell them and how can I ever tell
them, and make them understand? How can I?

Mule in the Yard

IT WAS a gray day in late January, though not cold because
of the fog. Old Het, just walked in from the poorhouse, ran
down the hall toward the kitchen, shouting in a strong,
bright, happy voice. She was about seventy probably, though
by her own counting, calculated from the ages of various
housewives in the town from brides to grandmothers whom
she claimed to have nursed in infancy, she would have to be
around a hundred and at least triplets. Tall, lean, fog-beaded,
in tennis shoes and a long rat-colored cloak trimmed with
what forty or fifty years ago had been fur, a modish though
not new purple toque set upon her headrag and carrying
(time was when she made her weekly rounds from kitchen
to kitchen carrying a brocaded carpetbag though since the
advent of the ten-cent stores the carpetbag became an endless
succession of the convenient paper receptacles with which
they supply their customers for a few cents) the shopping-
bag, she ran into the kitchen and shouted with strong and
childlike pleasure: "Miss Mannie! Mule in de yard!"

Mrs. Hait, stooping to the stove, in the act of drawing
from it a scuttle of live ashes, jerked upright; clutching the
scuttle, she glared at old Het, then she too spoke at once,
strong too, immediate. "Them sons of bitches," she said. She
left the kitchen, not running exactly, yet with a kind of out-
raged celerity, carrying the scuttle — a compact woman of

249

250 The Village

forty-odd, with an air of indomitable yet relieved bereave-
ment, as though that which had relicted her had been a
woman and a not particularly valuable one at that. She wore
a calico wrapper and a sweater coat, and a man's felt hat
which they in the town knew had belonged to her ten years'
dead husband. But the man's shoes had not belonged to him.
They were high shoes which buttoned, with toes like small
tulip bulbs, and in the town they knew that she had bought
them new for herself. She and old Het ran down the kitchen
steps and into the fog. That's why it was not cold: as though
there lay supine and prisoned between earth and mist the long
winter night's suspiration of the sleeping town in dark, close
rooms — the slumber and the rousing; the stale waking ther-
mostatic, by re-heating heat-engendered: it lay like a scum of
cold grease upon the steps and the wooden entrance to the
basement and upon the narrow plank walk which led to a
shed building in the corner of the yard: upon these planks,
running and still carrying the scuttle of live ashes, Mrs. Hait
skated viciously.

"Watch out! " old Het, footed securely by her rubber soles,
cried happily. "Dey in de front!" Mrs. Hait did not fall. She
did not even pause. She took in the immediate scene with
one cold glare and was running again when there appeared at
the corner of the house and apparently having been born
before their eyes of the fog itself, a mule. It looked taller
than a giraffe. Longheaded, with a flying halter about its
scissorlike ears, it rushed down upon them with violent and
apparitionlike suddenness.

"Dar hit!" old Het cried, waving the shopping-bag.
"Hoo!" Mrs. Hait whirled. Again she skidded savagely on
the greasy planks as she and the mule rushed parallel with
one another toward the shed building, from whose open
doorway there now projected the static and astonished face
of a cow. To the cow the fog-born mule doubtless looked

Mule in the Yard 251

taller and more incredibly sudden than a giraffe even, and
apparently bent upon charging right through the shed as
though it were made of straw or were purely and simply
mirage. The cow's head likewise had a quality transient and
abrupt and unmundane. It vanished, sucked into invisibility
like a match flame, though the mind knew and the reason
insisted that she had withdrawn into the shed, from which,
as proof's burden, there came an indescribable sound of
shock and alarm by shed and beast engendered, analogous to
a single note from a profoundly struck lyre or harp. Toward
this sound Mrs. Hait sprang, immediately, as if by pure reflex,
as though in invulnerable compact of female with female
against a world of mule and man. She and the mule con-
verged upon the shed at top speed, the heavy scuttle poised
lightly in her hand to hurl. Of course it did not take this
long, and likewise it was the mule which refused the gambit.
Old Het was still shouting "Dar hit! Dar hit!" when it
swerved and rushed at her where she stood tall as a stove
pipe, holding the shopping-bag which she swung at the beast
as it rushed past her and vanished beyond the other corner
of the house as though sucked back into the fog which had
produced it, profound and instantaneous and without any
sound.

With that unhasteful celerity Mrs. Hait turned and set
the scuttle down on the brick coping of the cellar entrance
and she and old Het turned the corner of the house in time to
see the now wraithlike mule at the moment when its course
converged with that of a choleric-looking rooster and eight
Rhode Island Red hens emerging from beneath the house.
Then for an instant its progress assumed the appearance and
trappings of an apotheosis: hell-born and hell-returning, in
the act of dissolving completely into the fog, it seemed to rise
vanishing into a sunless and dimensionless medium borne
upon and enclosed by small winged goblins.

252 The Village

"Dey's mo in de front!" old Het cried.

"Them sons of bitches," Mrs. Hait said, again in that grim,
prescient voice without rancor or heat. It was not the mules
to which she referred; it was not even the owner of them. It
was her whole town-dwelling history as dated from that
April dawn ten years ago when what was left of Hait had
been gathered from the mangled remains of five mules and
several feet of new Manila rope on a blind curve of the rail-
road just out of town; the geographical hap of her very
home; the very components of her bereavement — the mules,
the defunct husband, and the owner of them. His name was
Snopes; in the town they knew about him too — how he
bought his stock at the Memphis market and brought it to
Jefferson and sold it to farmers and widows and orphans
black and white, for whatever he could contrive — down to a
certain figure; and about how (usually in the dead season of
winter) teams and even small droves of his stock would es-
cape from the fenced pasture where he kept them and, tied
one to another with sometimes quite new hemp rope (and
which item Snopes included in the subsequent claim), would
be annihilated by freight trains on the same blind curve
which was to be the scene of Halt's exit from this world;
once a town wag sent him through the mail a printed train
schedule for the division. A squat, pasty man perennially tie-
less and with a strained, harried expression, at stated intervals
he passed athwart the peaceful and somnolent life of the
town in dust and uproar, his advent heralded by shouts and
cries, his passing marked by a yellow cloud filled with toss-
ing jug-shaped heads and clattering hooves and the same for-
lorn and earnest cries of the drovers; and last of all and well
back out of the dust, Snopes himself moving at a harried and
panting trot, since it was said in the town that he was deathly
afraid of the very beasts in which he cleverly dealt.

The path which he must follow from the railroad station

Mule in the Yard 253

to his pasture crossed the edge of town near Halt's home;
Hait and Mrs. Hait had not been in the house a week before
they waked one morning to find it surrounded by galloping
mules and the air filled with the shouts and cries of the dro-
vers. But it was not until that April dawn some years later,
when those who reached the scene first found what might be
termed foreign matter among the mangled mules and the
savage fragments of new rope, that the town suspected that
Hait stood in any closer relationship to Snopes and the mules
than that- of helping at periodical intervals to drive them out
of his front yard. After that they believed that they knew; in
a three days' recess of interest, surprise, and curiosity they
watched to see if Snopes would try to collect on Hait also.

But they learned only that the adjuster appeared and called
upon Mrs. Hait and that a few days later she cashed a check
for eight thousand five hundred dollars, since this was back
in the old halcyon days when even the companies considered
their southern branches and divisions the legitimate prey of
all who dwelt beside them. She took the cash: she stood in
her sweater coat and the hat which Hait had been wearing
on the fatal morning a week ago and listened in cold, grim
silence while the teller counted the money and the president
and the cashier tried to explain to her the virtues of a bond,
then of a savings account, then of a checking account, and
departed with the money in a salt sack under her apron; after
a time she painted her house: that serviceable and time-defy-
ing color which the railroad station was painted, as though
out of sentiment or (as some said) gratitude.

The adjuster also summoned Snopes into conference, from
which he emerged not only more harried-looking than ever,
but with his face stamped with a bewildered dismay which it
was to wear from then on, and that was the last time his pas-
ture fence was ever to give inexplicably away at dead of
night upon mules coupled in threes and fours by adeauate

254 The Village

rope even though not always new. And then it seemed as
though the mules themselves knew this, as if, even while hal-
tered at the Memphis block at his bid, they sensed it somehow
as they sensed that he was afraid of them. Now, three or four
times a year and as though by fiendish concord and as soon
as they were freed of the box car, the entire uproar — the dust
cloud filled with shouts earnest, harried, and dismayed, with
plunging demoniac shapes — would become translated in a
single burst of perverse and uncontrollable violence, without
any intervening contact with time, space, or earth, across
the peaceful and astonished town and into Mrs. Hait's yard,
where, in a certain hapless despair which abrogated for the
moment even physical fear, Snopes ducked and dodged
among the thundering shapes about the house (for whose
very impervious paint the town believed that he felt he had
paid and whose inmate lived within it a life of idle and queen-
like ease on money which he considered at least partly his
own) while gradually that section and neighborhood gath-
ered to look on from behind adjacent window curtains and
porches screened and not, and from the sidewalks and even
from halted wagons and cars in the street — housewives in the
wrappers and boudoir caps of morning, children on the way
to school, casual Negroes and casual whites in static and en-
tertained repose.

They were all there when, followed by old Het and carry-
ing the stub of a worn-out broom, Mrs. Hait ran around the
next corner and onto the handkerchief-sized plot of earth
which she called her front yard. It was small; any creature
with a running stride of three feet could have spanned it in
two paces, yet at the moment, due perhaps to the myopic
and distortive quality of the fog, it seemed to be as incredibly
full of mad life as a drop of water beneath the microscope.
Yet again she did not falter. With the broom clutched in her
hand and apparently with a kind of sublime faith in her own

Mule in the Yard 255

invulnerability, she rushed on after the haltered mule which
was still in that arrested and wraithlike process of vanishing
furiously into the fog, its wake indicated by the tossing and
dispersing shapes of the nine chickens like so many jagged
scraps of paper in the dying air blast of an automobile, and
the madly dodging figure of a man. The man was Snopes;
beaded too with moisture, his wild face gaped with hoarse
shouting and the two heavy lines of shaven beard descending
from the corners of it as though in alluvial retrospect of years
of tobacco, he screamed at her: "Fore God, Miz Haiti I done
everything I could!" She didn't even look at him.

"Ketch that big un with the bridle on," she said in her cold,
panting voice. "Git that big un outen here."

"Sho!" Snopes shrieked. "Jest let urn take their time. Jest
don't git um excited now."

"Watch out!" old Het shouted. "He headin fer de back
again!''

"Git the rope," Mrs. Halt said, running again. Snopes
glared back at old Het.

"Fore God, where is ere rope?" he shouted.

"In de cellar fo God!" old Het shouted, also without paus-
ing. "Go roun de udder way en head um." Again she and
Mrs. Halt turned the corner in time to see again the still-van-
ishing mule with the halter once more in the act of floating
lightly onward in its cloud of chickens with which, they
being able to pass under the house and so on the chord of a
circle while it had to go around on the arc, it had once more
coincided. When they turned the next corner they were in
the back yard again.

"Fo God!" old Het cried. "He fixin to misuse de cow!"
For they had gained on the mule now, since it had stopped.
In fact, they came around the corner on a tableau. The cow
now stood in the centre of the yard. She and the mule faced
one another a few feet apart. Motionless, with lowered heads

256 The Village

and braced forelegs, they looked like two book ends from
two distinct pairs of a general pattern which some one of
amateurly bucolic leanings might have purchased, and which
some child had salvaged, brought into idle juxtaposition and
then forgotten; and, his head and shoulders projecting above
the back-flung slant of the cellar entrance where the scuttle
still sat, Snopes standing as though buried to the armpits for
a Spanish-Indian-American suttee. Only again it did not take
this long. It was less than tableau; it was one of those things
which later even memory cannot quite affirm. Now and in
turn, man and cow and mule vanished beyond the next cor-
ner, Snopes now in the lead, carrying the rope, the cow next
with her tail rigid and raked slightly like the stern staff of a
boat. Mrs. Hait and old Het ran on, passing the open cellar
gaping upon its accumulation of human necessities and wid-
owed womanyears — boxes for kindling wood, old papers and
magazines, the broken and outworn furniture and utensils
which no woman ever throws away; a pile of coal and an-
other of pitch pine for priming fires — and ran on and turned
the next corner to see man and cow and mule all vanishing
now in the wild cloud of ubiquitous chickens which had once
more crossed beneath the house and emerged. They ran on,
Mrs. Hait in grim and unflagging silence, old Het with the
eager and happy amazement of a child. But when they gained
the front again they saw only Snopes. He lay flat on his
stomach, his head and shoulders upreared by his outstretched
arms, his coat tail swept forward by its own arrested momen-
tum about his head so that from beneath it his slack-jawed
face mused in wild repose like that of a burlesqued nun.

"Whar'd dey go?" old Het shouted at him. He didn't
answer.

uDey tightenin' on de curves!" she cried. "Dey already in
de back again!" That's where they were. The cow made a
feint at running into her shed, but deciding perhaps that her

Mule in the Yard 257

speed was too great, she whirled in a final desperation of
despair-like valor. But they did not see this, nor see the mule,
swerving to pass her, crash and blunder for an instant at the
open cellar door before going on. When they arrived, the
mule was gone. The scuttle was gone too, but they did not
notice it; they saw only the cow standing in the centre of the
yard as before, panting, rigid, with braced forelegs and low-
ered head facing nothing, as if the child had returned and re-
moved one of the book ends for some newer purpose or
game. They ran on. Mrs. Hait ran heavily now, her mouth
too open, her face putty-colored and one hand pressed to her
side. So slow was their progress that the mule in its third
circuit of the house overtook them from behind and soared
past with undiminished speed, with brief demon thunder and
a keen ammonia-sweet reek of sweat sudden and sharp as a
jeering cry, and was gone. Yet they ran doggedly on around
the next corner in time to see it succeed at last in vanishing
into the fog; they heard its hoofs, brief, staccato, and derisive,
on the paved street, dying away.

"Well!" old Het said, stopping. She panted, happily.
"Gentlemen, hush! Ain't we had — " Then she became stone
still; slowly her head turned, high-nosed, her nostrils pulsing;
perhaps for the instant she saw the open cellar door as they
had last passed it, with no scuttle beside it. "Fo God I smells
smoke!" she said. "Chile, run, git yo money."

That was still early, not yet ten o'clock. By noon the
house had burned to the ground. There was a farmers' sup-
ply store where Snopes could be usually found; more than
one had made a point of finding him there by that time. They
told him about how when the fire engine and the crowd
reached the scene, Mrs. Hait, followed by old Het carrying
her shopping-bag in one hand and a framed portrait of Mr.
Hait in the other, emerged with an umbrella and wearing a
new, dun-colored, mail-order coat, in one pocket of which

258 The Villag*

lay a fruit jar filled with smoothly rolled banknotes and in the
other a heavy, nickel-plated pistol, and crossed the street to
the house opposite, where with old Het beside her in another
rocker, she had been sitting ever since on the veranda, grim,
inscrutable, the two of them rocking steadily, while hoarse
and tireless men hurled her dishes and furniture and bedding
up and down the street.

"What are you telling me for?" Snopes said. "Hit warn't
me that set that ere scuttle of live fire where the first thing
that passed would knock hit into the cellar."

"It was you that opened the cellar door, though."

"Sho. And for what? To git that rope, her own rope,
where she told me to git it."

"To catch your mule with, that was trespassing on her
property. You can't get out of it this time, I. O. There ain't
a jury in the county that won't find for her."

"Yes. I reckon not. And just because she is a woman.
That's why. Because she is a durn woman. All right. Let her
go to her durn jury with hit. I can talk too; I reckon hit's a
few things I could tell a jury myself about — " He ceased.
They were watching him.

"What? Tell a jury about what?"

"Nothing. Because hit ain't going to no jury. A jury be-
tween her and me? Me and Mannie Hait? You boys don't
know her if you think she's going to make trouble over a
pure acci-dent couldn't nobody help. Why, there ain't a
fairer, finer woman in the county than Miz Mannie Hait. I
just wisht I had a opportunity to tell her so." The opportu-
nity came at once. Old Het was behind her, carrying the
shopping-bag. Mrs. Hait looked once, quietly, about at the
faces, making no response to the murmur of curious saluta-
tion, then not again. She didn't look at Snopes long either,
nor talk to him long.

"I come to buy that mule," she said.

Mule in the Yard 259

"What mule?" They looked at one another. "You'd like
to own that mule?" She looked at him. "Hit'll cost you a
hundred and fifty, Miz Mannie."

"You mean dollars?"

"I don't mean dimes nor nickels neither, Miz Mannie."

"Dollars," she said. "That's more than mules was in Halt's

time."

"Lots of things is different since Halt's time. Including
you and me."

"I reckon so," she said. Then she went away. She turned
without a word, old Het following.

"Maybe one of them others you looked at this morning
would suit you," Snopes said. She didn't answer. Then they
were gone.

"I don't know as I would have said that last to her," one
said.

"What for?" Snopes said. "If she was aiming to law some-
thing outen me about that fire, you reckon she would have
come and offered to pay me money for hit?" That was about
one o'clock. About four o'clock he was shouldering his way
through a throng of Negroes before a cheap grocery store
when one called his name. It was old Het, the now bulging
shopping-bag on her arm, eating bananas from a paper sack.

"Fo God I wuz jest dis minute huntin fer you," she said.
She handed the banana to a woman beside her and delved and
fumbled in the shopping-bag and extended a greenback.
"Miz Mannie gimme dis to give you; I wuz jest on de way
to de sto whar you stay at. Here." He took the bill.

"What's this? From Miz Hait?"

"Fer de mule." The bill was for ten dollars. "You don't
need to gimme no receipt. I kin be de witness I give hit to
you."

"Ten dollars? For that mule? I told her a hundred and
fifty dollars."

260 The Village

"You'll have to fix dat up wid her yo'self. She jest gimme
dis to give ter you when she sot out to fetch de mule."

"Set out to fetch — She went out there herself and taken
my mule outen my pasture?"

"Lawd, chile," old Het said, "Miz Mannie ain't skeered of
no mule. Ain't you done foun dat out?"

And then it became late, what with the yet short winter
days; when she came in sight of the two gaunt chimneys
against the sunset, evening was already finding itself. But she
could smell the ham cooking before she came in sight of the
cow shed even, though she could not see it until she came
around in front where the fire burned beneath an iron skillet
set on bricks and where nearby Mrs. Hait was milking the
cow. "Well," old Het said, "you is settled down, ain't you?"
She looked into the shed, neated and raked and swept even,
and floored now with fresh hay. A clean new lantern burned
on a box, beside it a pallet bed was spread neatly on the straw
and turned neatly back for the night. "Why, you is fixed
up," she said with pleased astonishment. Within the door was
a kitchen chair. She drew it out and sat down beside the
skillet and laid the bulging shopping-bag beside her.

"I'll tend dis meat whilst you milks. I'd offer to strip dat
cow fer you ef I wuzn't so wo out wid all dis excitement we
been had." She looked around her. "I don't believe I sees yo
new mule, dough." Mrs. Hait grunted, her head against the
cow's flank. After a moment she said,

"Did you give him that money?"

"I give um ter him. He ack surprise at first, lak maybe he
think you didn't aim to trade dat quick. I tole him to settle de
details wid you later. He taken de money, dough. So I reckin
dat's offen his mine en yo'n bofe." Again Mrs. Hait grunted.
Old Het turned the ham in the skillet. Beside it the coffee pot
bubbled and steamed. "Cawfee smell good too," she said. "I
ain't had no appetite in years now. A bird couldn't live on de
vittles I eats. But jest lemme git a whiff er cawfee en seem lak

Mule in the Yard 261

hit always whets me a little. Now, ef you jest had nudder
little piece o dis ham, now — Fo God, you got company
aready." But Mrs. Hait did not even look up until she had
finished. Then she turned without rising from the box on
which she sat.

"I reckon you and me better have a little talk," Snopes said.
"I reckon I got something that belongs to you and I hear you
got something that belongs to me." He looked about, quickly,
ceaselessly, while old Het watched him. He turned to her.
"You go away, aunty. I don't reckon you want to set here
and listen to us."

uLawd, honey," old Het said. "Don't you mind me. I done
already had so much troubles myself dat I kin set en listen
to udder folks' widout hit worryin me a-tall. You gawn talk
whut you came ter talk; I jest set here en tend de ham."
Snopes looked at Mrs. Hait.

"Ain't you going to make her go away?" he said.

"What for?" Mrs. Hait said. "I reckon she ain't the first
critter that ever come on this yard when hit wanted and
went or stayed when hit liked." Snopes made a gesture, brief,
fretted, restrained.

"Well," he said. "All right. So you taken the mule."

"I paid you for it. She give you the money."

"Ten dollars. For a hundred-and-fifty-dollar mule. Ten
dollars."

"I don't know anything about hundred-and-fifty-dollar
mules. All I know is what the railroad paid." Now Snopes
looked at her for a full moment.

"What do you mean?"

"Them sixty dollars a head the railroad used to pay you for
mules back when you and Hait "

"Hush," Snopes said; he looked about again, quick, cease-
less. "All right. Even call it sixty dollars. But you just sent
me ten."

"Yes. I sent you the difference." He looked at her, per-

262 The Village

fectly still. "Between that mule and what you owed Halt."

"What I owed "

"For getting them five mules onto the tr "

"Hush!" he cried. "Hush!" Her voice went on, cold, grim,
level.

"For helping you. You paid him fifty dollars each time,
and the railroad paid you sixty dollars a head for the mules.
Ain't that right?" He watched her. "The last time you never
paid him. So I taken that mule instead. And I sent you the ten
dollars difference."

"Yes," he said in a tone of quiet, swift, profound bemuse-
ment; then he cried: "But look! Here's where I got you. Hit
was our agreement that I wouldn't never owe him nothing
until after the mules was "

"I reckon you better hush yourself," Mrs. Halt said.

" — until hit was over. And this time, when over had come,
I never owed nobody no money because the man hit would
have been owed to wasn't nobody," he cried triumphantly.
"You see?" Sitting on the box, motionless, downlooking, Mrs,
Hait seemed to muse. "So you just take your ten dollars back
and tell me where my mule is and we'll just go back good
friends to where we started at. Fore God, I'm as sorry as ere
a living man about that fire "

"Fo God!" old Het said, "hit was a blaze, wuzn't it?"

" — but likely with all that ere railroad money you still got,
you just been wanting a chance to build new, all along. So
here. Take hit." He put the money into her hand. "Where's
my mule?" But Mrs. Hait didn't move at once.

"You want to give it back to me?" she said.

"Sho. We been friends all the time; now we'll just go back
to where we left off being. I don't hold no hard feelings and
don't you hold none. Where you got the mule hid?"

"Up at the end of that ravine ditch behind Spilmer's,"
she said.

Mule in the Yard 263

"Sho. I know. A good, sheltered place, since you ain't got
nere barn. Only if you'd a just left hit in the pasture, hit
would a saved us both trouble. But hit ain't no hard feelings
though. And so I'll bid you goodnight. You're all fixed up,
I see. I reckon you could save some more money by not
building no house a-tall."

"I reckon I could," Mrs. Hait said. But he was gone.

"Whut did you leave de mule dar fer?" old Het said.

"I reckon that's far enough," Mrs. Hait said.

"Fer enough?" But Mrs. Hait came and looked into the
skillet, and old Het said, "Wuz hit me er you dat mentioned
something erbout er nudder piece o dis ham?" So they were
both eating when in the not-quite-yet accomplished twilight
Snopes returned. He came up quietly and stood, holding his
hands to the blaze as if he were quite cold. He did not look
at any one now.

"I reckon I'll take that ere ten dollars," he said.

"What ten dollars?" Mrs. Hait said. He seemed to muse
upon the fire. Mrs. Hait and old Het chewed quietly, old Het
alone watching him.

"You ain't going to give hit back to me?" he said.

"You was the one that said to let's go back to where we
started," Mrs. Hait said.

"Fo God you wuz, en dat's de fack," old Het said. Snopes
mused upon the fire; he spoke in a tone of musing and amazed
despair:

"I go to the worry and the risk and the agoment for years
and years and I get sixty dollars. And you, one time, without
no trouble and no risk, without even knowing you are going
to git it, git eighty-five hundred dollars. I never begrudged
hit to you; can't nere a man say I did, even if hit did seem a
little strange that you should git it all when he wasn't work-
ing for you and you never even knowed where he was at and
what doing; that all you done to git it was to be married to

264 The Village

him. And now, after all these ten years of not begrudging
you hit, you taken the best mule I had and you ain't even
going to pay me ten dollars for hit. Hit ain't right. Hit ain't
justice."

"You got de mule back, en you ain't satisfried yit," old Het
said. "Whut does you want?" Now Snopes looked at Mrs.
Hait.

"For the last time I ask hit," he said. "Will you or won't
you give hit back?"

"Give what back?" Mrs. Hait said. Snopes turned. He
stumbled over something — :it was old Het's shopping-bag —
and recovered and went on. They could see him in silhou-
ette, as though framed by the two blackened chimneys
against the dying west; they saw him fling up both clenched
hands in a gesture almost Gallic, of resignation and impotent
despair. Then he was gone. Old Het was watching Mrs. Hait.

"Honey," she said. "Whut did you do wid de mule?" Mrs.
Hait leaned forward to the fire. On her plate lay a stale bis-
cuit. She lifted the skillet and poured over the biscuit the
grease in which the ham had cooked.

"I shot it," she said.

"You which?" old Het said. Mrs. Hait began to eat the
biscuit. "Well," old Het said, happily, "de mule burnt de
house en you shot de mule. Dat's whut I calls justice." It
was getting dark fast now, and before her was still the three-
mile walk to the poorhouse. But the dark would last a long
time in January, and the poorhouse too would not move at
once. She sighed with weary and happy relaxation. "Gentle-
men, hush! Ain't we had a day!"

That Will Be Fine

WE COULD HEAR the water running into the tub. We looked
at the presents scattered over the bed where mamma had
wrapped them in the colored paper, with our names on them
so Grandpa could tell who they belonged to easy when he
would take them off the tree. There was a present for every-
body except Grandpa because mamma said that Grandpa is
too old to get presents any more.

"This one is yours," I said.

"Sho now/' Rosie said. "You come on and get in that
tub like your mamma tell you."

"I know what's in it," I said. "I could tell you if I wanted
to."

Rosie looked at her present. "I reckon I kin wait twell
hit be handed to me at the right time," she said.

"I'll tell you what's in it for a nickel," I said.

Rosie looked at her present. "I ain't got no nickel," she
said. "But I will have Christmas morning when Mr. Rodney
give me that dime."

"You'll know what's in it anyway then and you won't
pay me," I said. "Go and ask mamma to lend you a nickel."

Then Rosie grabbed me by the arm. "You come on and
get in that tub," she said. "You and money! If you ain't
rich time you twenty-one, hit will be because the law done
abolished money or done abolished you."

265

266 The Village

So I went and bathed and came back, with the presents all
scattered out across mamma's and papa's bed and you could
almost smell it and tomorrow night they would begin to
shoot the fireworks and then you could hear it too. It
would be just tonight and then tomorrow we would get
on the train, except papa, because he would have to stay at
the livery stable until after Christmas Eve, and go to
Grandpa's, and then tomorrow night and then it would
be Christmas and Grandpa would take the presents off the
tree and call out our names, and the one from me to Uncle
Rodney that I bought with my own dime and so after a
while Uncle Rodney would prize open Grandpa's desk
and take a dose of Grandpa's tonic and maybe he would
give me another quarter for helping him, like he did last
Christmas, instead of just a nickel, like he would do last
summer while he was visiting mamma and us and we were
doing business with Mrs. Tucker before Uncle Rodney
went home and began to work for the Compress Association,
and it would be fine. Or maybe even a half a dollar and it
seemed to me like I just couldn't wait.

"Jesus, I can't hardly wait," I said.

"You which?" Rosie hollered. "Jesus?" she hollered.
"Jesus? You let your mamma hear you cussing and I bound
you'll wait. You talk to me about a nickel! For a nickel
I'd tell her just what you said."

"If you'll pay me a nickel I'll tell her myself," I said.

"Get into that bed!" Rosie hollered. "A seven-year-old
boy, cussing!"

"If you will promise not to tell her, I'll tell you what's in
your present and you can pay me the nickel Christmas morn-
ing," I said.

"Get in that bed!" Rosie hollered. "You and your nickel!
I bound if I thought any of you all was fixing to buy even
a dime present for your grandpa, I'd put in a nickel of hit
myself."

That Will Be Fine 267

"Grandpa don't want presents," I said. "He's too old."
"Hah," Rosie said. "Too old, is he? Suppose everybody
decided you was too young to have nickels: what would you
think about that? Hah?"

So Rosie turned out the light and went out. But I
could still see the presents by the firelight: the ones for Uncle
Rodney and Grandma and Aunt Louisa and Aunt Louisa's
husband Uncle Fred, and Cousin Louisa and Cousin Fred
and the baby and Grandpa's cook and our cook, that was
Rosie, and maybe somebody ought to give Grandpa a present
only maybe it ought to be Aunt Louisa because she and
Uncle Fred lived with Grandpa, or maybe Uncle Rodney
ought to because he lived with Grandpa too. Uncle Rodney
always gave mamma and papa a present but maybe it would
be just a waste of his time and Grandpa's time both for
Uncle Rodney to give Grandpa a present, because one time
I asked mamma why Grandpa always looked at the present
Uncle Rodney gave her and papa and got so mad, and papa
began to laugh and mamma said papa ought to be ashamed,
that it wasn't Uncle Rodney's fault if his generosity was
longer than his pocket book, and papa said Yes, it certainly
wasn't Uncle Rodney's fault, he never knew a man to try
harder to get money than Uncle Rodney did, that Uncle
Rodney had tried every known plan to get it except work,
and that if mamma would just think back about two years
she would remember one time when Uncle Rodney could
have thanked his stars that there was one man in the con-
nection whose generosity, or whatever mamma wanted to
call it, was at least five hundred dollars shorter than his
pocket book, and mamma said she defied papa to say that
Uncle Rodney stole the money, that it had been malicious
persecution and papa knew it, and that papa and most other
men were prejudiced against Uncle Rodney, why she didn't
know, and that if papa begrudged having lent Uncle Rodney
the five hundred dollars when the family's good name was

268 The Village

at stake to say so and Grandpa would raise it somehow and
pay papa back, and then she began to cry and papa said
All right, all right, and mamma cried and said how Uncle
Rodney was the baby and that must be why papa hated
him and papa said All right, all right; for God's sake, all
right.

Because mamma and papa didn't know that Uncle Rodney
had been handling his business all the time he was visiting
us last summer, any more than the people in Mottstown
knew that he was doing business last Christmas when I
worked for him the first time and he paid me the quarter.
Because he said that if he preferred to do business with
ladies instead of men it wasn't anybody's business except his,
not even Mr. Tucker's. He said how I never went around
telling people about papa's business and I said how every-
body knew papa was in the livery-stable business and so I
didn't have to tell them, and Uncle Rodney said Well,
that was what half of the nickel was for and did I want to
keep on making the nickels or did I want him to hire some-
body else? So I would go on ahead and watch through Mr.
Tucker's fence until he came out to go to town and I would
go along behind the fence to the corner and watch until
Mr. Tucker was out of sight and then I would put my hat
on top of the fence post and leave it there until I saw Mr.
Tucker coming back. Only he never came back while I
was there because Uncle Rodney would always be through
before then, and he would come up and we would walk
back home and he would tell mamma how far we had
walked that day and mamma would say how good that was
for Uncle Rodney's health. So he just paid me a nickel at
home. It wasn't as much as the quarter when he was in
business with the other lady in Mottstown Christmas, but
that was just one rime and he visited us all summer and so
by that time I had a lot more than a quarter. And besides

That Will Be Fine 269

the other time was Christmas and he took a dose of Grandpa's
tonic before he paid me the quarter and so maybe this time
it might be even a half a dollar. I couldn't hardly wait.

II

BUT IT GOT TO BE daylight at last and I put on my Sunday
suit, and I would go to the front door and watch for the
hack and then I would go to the kitchen and ask Rosie if it
wasn't almost time and she would tell me the train wasn't
even due for two hours yet. Only while she was telling me
we heard the hack, and so I thought it was time for us to
go and get on the train and it would be fine, and then we
would go to Grandpa's and then it would be tonight and
then tomorrow and maybe it would be a half a dollar this
cime and Jesus it would be fine. Then mamma came running
out without even her hat on and she said how it was two
hours yet and she wasn't even dressed and John Paul said
Yessum but papa sent him and papa said for John Paul to
tell mamma that Aunt Louisa was here and for mamma to
hurry. So we put the basket of presents into the hack and
I rode on the box with John Paul and mamma hollering
from inside the hack about Aunt Louisa, and John Paul said
that Aunt Louisa had come in a hired buggy and papa took
her to the hotel to eat breakfast because she left Mottstown
before daylight even. And so maybe Aunt Louisa had come
to Jefferson to help mamma and papa get a present for
Grandpa.

"Because we have one for everybody else," I said, "I
bought one for Uncle Rodney with my own money."

Then John Paul began to laugh and I said Why? and he
said it was at the notion of me giving Uncle Rodney any-
thing that he would want to use, and I said Why? and
John Paul said because I was shaped like a man, and I said

2 yo The Village

Why? and John Paul said he bet papa would like to give
Uncle Rodney a present without even waiting for Christmas,
and I said What? and John Paul said A job of work. And I
told John Paul how Uncle Rodney had been working all the
time he was visiting us last summer, and John Paul quit
laughing and said Sho, he reckoned anything a man kept
at all the time, night and day both, he would call it work
no matter how much fun it started out to be, and I said
Anyway Uncle Rodney works now, he works in the office
of the Compress Association, and John Paul laughed good
then and said it would sholy take a whole association to
compress Uncle Rodney. And then mamma began to holler
to go straight to the hotel, and John Paul said Nome, papa
said to come straight to the livery stable and wait for him.
And so we went to the hotel and Aunt Louisa and papa
came out and papa helped Aunt Louisa into the hack and
Aunt Louisa began to cry and mamma hollering Louisa!
Louisa! What is it? What has happened? and papa saying
Wait now. Wait. Remember the nigger, and that meant
John Paul, and so it must have been a present for Grandpa
and it didn't come.

And then we didn't go on the train after all. We went to
the stable and they already had the light road hack hitched
up and waiting, and mamma was crying now and saying
how papa never even had his Sunday clothes and papa
cussing now and saying Damn the clothes; if we didn't get
to Uncle Rodney before the others caught him, papa would
just wear the clothes Uncle Rodney had on now. So we got
into the road hack fast and papa closed the curtains and then
mamma and Aunt Louisa could cry all right and papa hol-
lered to John Paul to go home and tell Rosie to pack his
Sunday suit and take her to the train; anyway that would be
fine for Rosie. So we didn't go on the train but we went
fast, with papa driving and saying Didn't anybody know

That W ill Ee Fine 271

where he was? and Aunt Louisa quit crying a while and
said how Uncle Rodney didn't come to supper last night,
but right after supper he came in and how Aunt Louisa
had a terrible feeling as soon as she heard his step in the
hall and how Uncle Rodney wouldn't tell her until they
were in his room and the door closed and then he said
he must have two thousand dollars and Aunt Louisa said
where in the world could she get two thousand dollars? and
Uncle Rodney said Ask Fred, that was Aunt Louisa's hus-
band, and George, that was papa; tell them they would
have to dig it up, and Aunt Louisa said she had that terrible
feeling and she said Rodney! Rodney! What — and Uncle
Rodney begun to cuss and say Dammit, don't start sniveling
and crying now, and Aunt Louisa said Rodney, what have
you done now? and then they both heard the knocking at
the door and how Aunt Louisa looked at Uncle Rodney and
she knew the truth before she even laid eyes on Mr. Pruitt
and the sheriff, and how she said Don't tell pa! Keep it
from pa! It will kill him. . . .

"Who?" papa said. "Mister who?"

"Mr. Pruitt," Aunt Louisa said, crying again. "The
president of the Compress Association. They moved to
Mottstown last spring. You don't know him."

So she went down to the door and it was Mr. Pruitt and
the sheriff. And how Aunt Louisa begged Mr. Pruitt for
Grandpa's sake and how she gave Mr. Pruitt her oath that
Uncle Rodney would stay right there in the house until
papa could get there, and Mr. Pruitt said how he hated it
to happen at Christmas too and so for Grandpa's and Aunt
Louisa's sake he would give them until the day after Christ-
mas if Aunt Louisa would promise him that Uncle Rodney
would not try to leave Mottstown. And how Mr. Pruitt
showed her with her own eyes the check with Grandpa's
name signed to it and how even Aunt Louisa could see that

272 The Village

Grandpa's name had been — and then mamma said Louisa!
Louisa! Remember Georgie! and that was me, and papa
cussed too, hollering How in damnation do you expect
to keep it from him? Ey hiding the newspapers? and Aunt
Louisa cried again and said how everybody was bound to
know it, that she didn't expect or hope that any of us could
ever hold our heads up again, that all she hoped for was to
keep it from Grandpa because it would kill him. She cried
hard then and papa had to stop at a branch and get down
and soak his handkerchief for mamma to wipe Aunt Louisa's
face with it and then papa took the bottle of tonic out of the
dash pocket and put a few drops on the handkerchief, and
Aunt Louisa smelled it and then papa took a dose of the
tonic out of the bottle and mamma said George! and papa
drank some more of the tonic and then made like he was
handing the bottle back for mamma and Aunt Louisa to
take a dose too and said, "I don't blame you. If I was a
woman in this family I'd take to drink too. Now let me get
this bond business straight."

"It was those road bonds of ma's," Aunt Louisa said.

We were going fast again now because the horses had
rested while papa was wetting the handkerchief and taking
the dose of tonic, and papa was saying All right, what about
the bonds? when all of a sudden he jerked around in the
seat and said, "Road bonds? Do you mean he took that
damn screw driver and prized open your mother's desk too?"

Then mamma said George! how can you? only Aunt
Louisa was talking now, quick now, not crying now, not
yet, and papa with his head turned over his shoulder and
saying Did Aunt Louisa mean that that five hundred papa
had to pay out two years ago wasn't all of it? And Aunt
Louisa said it was twenty-five hundred, only they didn't
v^ant Grandpa to find it out, and so Grandma put up her
road bonds for security on the note, and how they said now

That Will Be Fine 273

that Uncle Rodney had redeemed Grandma's note and the
road bonds from the bank with some of the Compress
Association's bonds out of the safe in the Compress Associa-
tion office, because when Mr. Pruitt found the Compress
Association's bonds were missing he looked for them and
found them in the bank and when he looked in the Compress
Association's safe all he found was the check for two thou-
sand dollars with Grandpa's name signed to it, and how
Mr. Pruitt hadn't lived in Mottstown but a year but even he
knew that Grandpa never signed that check and besides he
looked in the bank again and Grandpa never had two
thousand dollars in it, and how Mr. Pruitt said how he would
wait until the day after Christmas if Aunt Louisa would
give him her sworn oath that Uncle Rodney would not go
away, and Aunt Louisa did it and then she went back up-
stairs to plead with Uncle Rodney to give Mr. Pruitt the
bonds and she went into Uncle Rodney's room where she
had left him, and the window was open and Uncle Rodney
was gone.

"Damn Rodney!" papa said. "The bonds! You mean, no-
body knows where the bonds are?"

Now we were going fast because we were coming down
the last hill and into the valley where Mottstown was. Soon
we would begin to smell it again; it would be just today and
then tonight and then it would be Christmas, and Aunt
Louisa sitting there with her face white like a whitewashed
fence that has been rained on and papa said Who in hell
ever gave him such a job anyway, and Aunt Louisa said Mr.
Pruitt, and papa said how even if Mr. Pruitt had only lived
in Mottstown a few months, and then Aunt Louisa began
to cry without even putting her handkerchief to her face
this time and mamma looked at Aunt Louisa and she began
to cry too and papa took out the whip and hit the team a
belt with it even if they were going fast and he cussed.

274 The Village

"Damnation to hell," papa said. "I see. Pruitt's married."

Then we could see it too. There were holly wreaths in
the windows like at home in Jefferson, and I said, "They
shoot fireworks in Mottstown too like they do in Jefferson."

Aunt Louisa and mamma were crying good now, and now
it was papa saying Here, here; remember Georgie, and that
was me, and Aunt Louisa said, "Yes, yes! Painted ,common
thing, traipsing up and down the streets all afternoon alone
in a buggy, and the one and only time Mrs. Church called
on her, and that was because of Mr. Pruitt's position alone,
Mrs. Church found her without corsets on and Mrs. Church
told me she smelled liquor on her breath."

And papa saying Here, here, and Aunt Louisa crying
good and saying how it was Mrs. Pruitt that did it because
Uncle Rodney was young and easy led because he never
had had opportunities to meet a nice girl and marry her, and
papa was driving fast toward Grandpa's house and he said,
"Marry? Rodney marry? What in hell pleasure would he
get out of slipping out of his own house and waiting until
after dark and slipping around to the back and climbing up
the gutter and into a room where there wasn't anybody in
it but his own wife."

And so mamma and Aunt Louisa were crying good when
we got to Grandpa's.

Ill

AND UNCLE RODNEY wasn't there. We came in, and Grandma
said how Mandy, that was Grandpa's cook, hadn't come
to cook breakfast and when Grandma sent Emmeline, that
was Aunt Louisa's baby's nurse, down to Mandy's cabin
in the back yard, the door was locked on the inside but
Mandy wouldn't answer and then Grandma went down
there herself and Mandy wouldn't answer and so Cousin

That Will Be Fine 275

Fred climbed in the window and Mandy was gone and Uncle
Fred had just got back from town then and he and papa both
hollered, "Locked? on the inside? and nobody in it?"

And then Uncle Fred told papa to go in and keep Grandpa
entertained and he would go and then Aunt Louisa grabbed
papa and Uncle Fred both and said she would keep Grandpa
quiet and for both of them to go and find him, find him,
and papa said if only the fool hasn't tried to sell them to some-
body, and Uncle Fred said Good God, man, don't you
know that check was dated ten days ago? And so we went
in where Grandpa was reared back in his chair and saying
how he hadn't expected papa until tomorrow but by God
he was glad to see somebody at last because he waked up
this morning and his cook had quit and Louisa had chased
off somewhere before daylight and now he couldn't even
find Uncle Rodney to go down and bring his mail and a
cigar or two back, and so thank God Christmas never came
but once a year and so be damned if he wouldn't be glad
when it was over, only he was laughing now because when
he said that about Christmas before Christmas he always
laughed, it wasn't until after Christmas that he didn't laugh
when he said that about Christmas. Then Aunt Louisa got
Grandpa's keys out of his pocket herself and opened the
desk where Uncle Rodney would prize it open with a screw
driver, and took out Grandpa's tonic and then mamma said
for me to go and find Cousin Fred and Cousin Louisa.

So Uncle Rodney wasn't there. Only at first I thought
maybe it wouldn't be a quarter even, it wouldn't be nothing
this time, so at first all I had to think about was that anyway
it would be Christmas and that would be something anyway.
Because I went on around the house, and so after a while
papa and Uncle Fred came out, and I could see them through
the bushes knocking at Mandy's door and calling, "Rodney,
Rodney," like that. Then I had to get back in the bushes

276 The Village

because Uncle Fred had to pass right by me to go to the
woodshed to get the axe to open Mandy's door. But they
couldn't fool Uncle Rodney. If Mr. Tucker couldn't fool
Uncle Rodney in Mr. Tucker's own house, Uncle Fred and
papa ought to known they couldn't fool him right in his
own papa's back yard. So I didn't even need to hear them.
I just waited until after a while Uncle Fred came back out
the broken door and came to the woodshed and took the axe
and pulled the lock and hasp and steeple off the woodhouse
door and went back and then papa came out of Mandy's
house and they nailed the woodhouse lock onto Mandy's
door and locked it and they went around behind Mandy's
house, and I could hear Uncle Fred nailing the windows up.
Then they went back to the house. But it didn't matter if
Mandy was in the house too and couldn't get out, because
the train came from Jefferson with Rosie and papa's Sunday
clothes on it and so Rosie was there to cook for Grandpa
and us and so that was all right too.

But they couldn't fool Uncle Rodney. I could have told
them that. I could have told them that sometimes Uncle
Rodney even wanted to wait until after dark to even begin
to do business. And so it was all right even if it was late in
the afternoon before I could get away from Cousin Fred
and Cousin Louisa. It was late; soon they would begin to
shoot the fireworks downtown, and then we would be hear-
ing it too, so I could just see his face a little between the
slats where papa and Uncle Fred had nailed up the back
window; I could see his face where he hadn't shaved, and he
was asking me why in hell it took me so long because he
had heard the Jefferson train come before dinner, before
eleven o'clock, and laughing about how papa and Uncle
Fred had nailed him up in the house to keep him when that
was exactly what he wanted, and that I would have to slip
out right after supper somehow and did I reckon I could

That Will Be Fine 277

manage it? And I said how last Christmas it had been a
quarter, but I didn't have to slip out of the house that time,
and he laughed, saying Quarter? Quarter? did I ever see ten
quarters all at once? and I never did, and he said for me to
be there with the screw driver right after supper and I
would see ten quarters, and to remember that even God
didn't know where he is and so for me to get the hell away
and stay away until I came back after dark with the screw
driver.

And they couldn't fool me either. Because I had been
watching the man all afternoon, even when he thought I
was just playing and maybe because I was from Jefferson
instead of Mottstown and so I wouldn't know who he was.
But I did, because once when he was walking past the back
fence and he stopped and lit his cigar again and I saw the
badge under his coat when he struck the match and so I
knew he was like Mr. Watts at Jefferson that catches the
niggers. So I was playing by the fence and I could hear him
stopping and looking at me and I played and he said,
"Howdy, son. Santy Glaus coming to see you tomorrow?"

"Yes, sir," I said.

"You're Miss Sarah's boy, from up at Jefferson, ain't you?"
he said.

"Yes, sir," I said.

"Come to- spend Christmas with your grandpa, eh?" he
said. "I wonder if your Uncle Rodney's at home this after-
noon."

"No, sir," I said.

"Well, well, that's too bad," he said. "I wanted to see him
a minute. He's downtown, I reckon?"

"No, sir," I said.

"Well, well," he said. "You mean he's gone away on a
visit, maybe?"

"Yes, sir," I said.

278 The Village

"Well, well," he said. "That's too bad. I wanted to see him
on a little business. But I reckon it can wait." Then he looked
at me and then he said, "You're sure he's out of town,
then?"

"Yes, sir," I said.

"Well, that was all I wanted to know," he said. "If you
happen to mention this to your Aunt Louisa or your Uncle
Fred you can tell them that was all I wanted to know."

"Yes, sir," I said. So he went away. And he didn't pass
the house any more. I watched for him, but he didn't come
back. So he couldn't fool me either.

IV

THEN IT BEGAN to get dark and they started to shoot the fire-
works downtown. I could hear them, and soon we would
be seeing the Roman candles and skyrockets and I would
have the ten quarters then and I thought about the basket
full of presents and I thought how maybe I could go on
downtown when I got through working for Uncle Rodney
and buy a present for Grandpa with a dime out of the ten
quarters and give it to him tomorrow and maybe, because
nobody else had given him a present, Grandpa might give
me a quarter too instead of the dime tomorrow, and that
would be twenty-one quarters, except for the dime, and that
would be fine sure enough. But I didn't have time to do that.
We ate supper, and Rosie had to cook that too, and mamma
and Aunt Louisa with powder on their faces where they
had been crying, and Grandpa; it was papa helping him
take a dose of tonic every now and then all afternoon while
Uncle Fred was downtown, and Uncle Fred came back and
papa came out in the hall and Uncle Fred said he had
looked everywhere, in the bank and in the Compress, and
how Mr. Pruitt had helped him but they couldn't find a sign
either of them or of the money, because Uncle Fred war

That Will Be Fine 279

afraid because one night last week Uncle Rodney hired
a rig and went somewhere and Uncle Fred found out
Uncle Rodney drove over to the main line at Kingston and
caught the fast train to Memphis, and papa said Damnation,
and Uncle Fred said By God we will go down there after
supper and sweat it out of him, because at least we have
got him. I told Pruitt that and he said that if we hold to
him, he will hold off and give us a chance.

So Uncle Fred and papa and Grandpa came in to supper
together, with Grandpa between them saying Christmas
don't come but once a year, thank God, so hooray for
it, and papa and Uncle Fred saying Now you are all
right, pa; straight ahead now, pa, and Grandpa would go
straight ahead awhile and then begin to holler Where in hell
is that damn boy? and that meant Uncle Rodney, and that
Grandpa was a good mind to go downtown himself and
haul Uncle Rodney out of that damn pool hall and make
him come home and see his kinfolks. And so we ate supper
and mamma said she would take the children upstairs and
Aunt Louisa said No, Emmeline could put us to bed, and
so we went up the back stairs, and Emmeline said how she
had done already had to cook breakfast extra today and if
folks thought she was going to waste all her Christmas doing
extra work they never had the sense she give them credit for
and that this looked like to her it was a good house to be
away from nohow, and so we went into the room and then
after a while I went back down the back stairs and I re-
membered where to find the screw driver too. Then I
could hear the firecrackers plain from downtown, and the
moon was shining now but I could still see the Roman
candles and the skyrockets running up the sky. Then
Uncle Rodney's hand came out of the crack in the shutter
and took the screw driver. I couldn't see his face now and
it wasn't laughing exactly, it didn't sound exactly like
laughing, it was just the way he breathed behind the shutter.

i8o The Village

Because they couldn't fool him. "All right," he said. "Now
that's ten quarters. But wait. Are you sure nobody knows
where I am?"

"Yes, sir," I said. "I waited by the fence until he come
and asked me."

"Which one?" Uncle Rodney said.

"The one that wears the badge," I said.

Then Uncle Rodney cussed. But it wasn't mad cussing.
It sounded just like it sounded when he was laughing ex-
cept the words.

"He said if you were out of town on a visit, and I said
Yes sir," I said.

"Good," Uncle Rodney said. "By God, some day you will
be as good a business man as I am. And I won't make you
a liar much longer, either. So now you have got ten quarters,
haven't you?"

"No," I said. "I haven't got them yet."

Then he cussed again, and I said, "I will hold my cap up
and you can drop them in it and they won't spill then."

Then he cussed hard, only it wasn't loud. "Only I'm
not going to give you ten quarters," he said, and I begun
to say You said — and Uncle Rodney said, "Because I am
going to give you twenty."

And I said Yes, sir, and he told me how to find the right
house, and what to do when I found it. Only there wasn't
any paper to carry this time because Uncle Rodney said how
this was a twenty-quarter job, and so it was too important
to put on paper and besides I wouldn't need a paper because
I would not know them anyhow, and his voice coming hiss-
ing down from behind the shutter where I couldn't see him
and still sounding like when he cussed while he was saying
how papa and Uncle Fred had done him a favor by nailing
up the door and window and they didn't even have sense
enough to know it.

That Will Be Fine 281

"Start at the corner of the house and count three windows.
Then throw the handful of gravel against the window.
Then when the window opens — never mind who it will be,
you won't know anyway — just say who you are and then
say 'He will be at the corner with the buggy in ten minutes.
Bring the jewelry.' Now you say it," Uncle Rodney said.

"He will be at the corner with the buggy in ten minutes.
Bring the jewelry," I said.

"Say 'Bring all the jewelry,' " Uncle Rodney said.

"Bring all the jewelry," I said.

"Good," Uncle Rodney said. Then he said, "Well? What
are you waiting on?"

"For the twenty quarters," I said.

Uncle Rodney cussed again. "Do you expect me to pay
you before you have done the work?" he said.

"You said about a buggy," I said. "Maybe you will forget
to pay me before you go and you might not get back until
after we go back home. And besides, that day last summer
when we couldn't do any business with Mrs. Tucker be-
cause she was sick and you wouldn't pay me the nickel be-
cause you said it wasn't your fault Mrs. Tucker was sick."

Then Uncle Rodney cussed hard and quiet behind the
crack and then he said, "Listen. I haven't got the twenty
quarters now. I haven't even got one quarter now. And the
only way I can get any is to get out of here and finish this
business. And I can't finish this business tonight unless you do
your work. See? I'll be right behind you. I'll be waiting right
there at the corner in the buggy when you come back. Now,
go on. Hurry."

V

So I WENT ON ACROSS THE YARD, only the moon was bright
now and I walked behind the fence until I got to the street*

282 The Village

And I could hear the firecrackers and I could see the Roman
candles and skyrockets sliding up the sky, but the fireworks
were all downtown, and so all I could see along the street was
the candles and wreaths in the windows. So I came to the
lane, went up the lane to the stable, and I could hear the
horse in the stable, but I didn't know whether it was the right
stable or not; but pretty soon Uncle Rodney kind of jumped
around the corner of the stable and said Here you are, and
he showed me where to stand and listen toward the house and
he went back into the stable. But I couldn't hear anything
but Uncle Rodney harnessing the horse, and then he whistled
and I went back and he had the horse already hitched to the
buggy and I said Whose horse and buggy is this; it's a lot
skinnier than Grandpa's horse? And Uncle Rodney said It's
my horse now, only damn this moonlight to hell. Then I
went back down the lane to the street and there wasn't any-
body coming so I waved my arm in the moonlight, and the
buggy came up and I got in and we went fast. The side cur-
tains were up and so I couldn't see the skyrockets and Roman
candles from town, but I could hear the firecrackers and I
thought maybe we were going through town and maybe
Uncle Rodney would stop and give me some of the twenty
quarters and I could buy Grandpa a present for tomorrow,
but we didn't; Uncle Rodney just raised the side curtain
without stopping and then I could see the house, the two
magnolia trees, but we didn't stop until we came to the
corner.

"Now," Uncle Rodney said, "when the window opens,
say 'He will be at the corner in ten minutes. Bring all the
jewelry.' Never mind who it will be. You don't want to
know who it is. You want to even forget what house it is.
See?"

"Yes, sir," I said. "And then you will pay me the "

"Yes!" he said, cussing. "Yes! Get out of here quick!"

That Will Be Fine 283

So I got out and the buggy went on and I went back up
the street. And the house was dark all right except for one
light, so it was the right one, besides the two trees. So I went
across the yard and counted the three windows and I was
just about to throw the gravel when a lady ran out from be-
hind a bush and grabbed me. She kept on trying to say some-
thing, only I couldn't tell what it was, and besides she never
had time to say very much anyhow because a man ran out
from behind another bush and grabbed us both. Only he
grabbed her by the mouth, because I could tell that from the
kind of slobbering noise she made while she was fighting to
get loose.

"Well, boy?" he said. "What is it? Are you the one?"

"I work for Uncle Rodney," I said.

"Then you're the one," he said. Now the lady was fighting
2nd slobbering sure enough, but he held her by the mouth.
"All right. What is it?"

Only I didn't know Uncle Rodney ever did business with
men. But maybe after he began to work in the Compress As-
sociation he had to. And then he had told me I would not
know them anyway, so maybe that was what he meant.

"He says to be at the corner in ten minutes," I said. "And
to bring all the jewelry. He said for me to say that twice.
Bring all the jewelry."

The lady was slobbering and fighting worse than ever
now, so maybe he had to turn me loose so he could hold her
with both hands.

"Bring all the jewelry," he said, holding the lady with both
hands now. "That's a good idea. That's fine. I don't blame
him for telling you to say that twice. All right. Now you go
back to the corner and wait and when he comes, tell him this:
"She says to come and help carry it.' Say that to him twice,
too. Understand?"

"Then I'll get my twenty quarters," I said.

284 The Village

"Twenty quarters, hah?" the man said, holding the lady.
"That's what you are to get, is it? That's not enough. You
tell him this, too: 'She says to give you a piece of the jew-
elry.' Understand?"

"I just want my twenty quarters," I said.

Then he and the lady went back behind the bushes again
and I went on, too, back toward the corner, and I could see
the Roman candles and skyrockets again from toward town
and I could hear the firecrackers, and then the buggy came
back and Uncle Rodney was hissing again behind the curtain
like when he was behind the slats on Mandy's window.

"Well? "he said.

"She said for you to come and help carry it," I said.

"What?" Uncle Rodney said. "She said he's not there?'"

"No, sir. She said for you to come and help carry it. For
me to say that twice." Then I said, "Where's my twenty
quarters?" because he had already jumped out of the buggy
and jumped across the walk into the shadow of some bushes.
So I went into the bushes too and said, "You said you would
give "

"All right; all right!" Uncle Rodney said. He was kind of
squatting along the bushes; I could hear him breathing. "I'll
give them to you tomorrow. I'll give you thirty quarters
tomorrow. Now you get to hell on home. And if they have
been down to Mandy's house, you don't know anything.
Run, now. Hurry."

"I'd rather have the twenty quarters tonight," I said.

He was squatting fast along in the shadow of the bushes,
and I was right behind him, because when he whirled around
he almost touched me, but I jumped back out of the bushes
in time and he stood there cussing at me and then he stooped
down and I saw it was a stick in his hand and I turned and
ran. Then he went on, squatting along in the shadow, and
then I went back to the buggy, because the day after Christ-

That Will Be Fine 285

mas we would go back to Jefferson, and so if Uncle Rodney
didn't get back before then I would not see him again until
next summer and then maybe he would be in business with
another lady and my twenty quarters would be like my
nickel that time when Mrs. Tucker was sick. So I waited by
the buggy and I could watch the skyrockets and the Roman
candles and I could hear the firecrackers from town, only it
was late now and so maybe all the stores would be closed and
so I couldn't buy Grandpa a present, even when Uncle Rod-
ney came back and gave me my twenty quarters. So I was
listening to the firecrackers and thinking about how maybe I
could tell Grandpa that I had wanted to buy him a present
and so maybe he might give me fifteen cents instead of a dime
anyway, when all of a sudden they started shooting fire-
crackers back at the house where Uncle Rodney had gone.
Only they just shot five of them fast, and when they didn't
shoot any more I thought that maybe in a minute they would
shoot the skyrockets and Roman candles too. But they didn't.
They just shot the five firecrackers right quick and then
stopped, and I stood by the buggy and then folks began to
come out of the houses and holler at one another and then I
began to see men running toward the house where Uncle
Rodney had gone, and then a man came out of the yard fast
and went up the street toward Grandpa's and I thought at
first it was Uncle Rodney and that he had forgotten the
buggy, until I saw that it wasn't.

But Uncle Rodney never came back and so I went on
toward the yard to where the men were, because I could still
watch the buggy too and see Uncle Rodney if he came back
out of the bushes, and I came to the yard and I saw six men
carrying something long and then two other men ran up and
stopped me and one of them said Hell-fire, it's one of those
kids, the one from Jefferson. And I could see then that what
the men were carrying was a window blind with something

286 The Village

wrapped in a quilt on it and so I thought at first that they had
come to help Uncle Rodney carry the jewelry, only I didn't
see Uncle Rodney anywhere, and then one of the men said,
"Who? One of the kids? Hell-fire, somebody take him on
home."

So the man picked me up, but I said I had to wait on Uncle
Rodney, and the man said that Uncle Rodney would be all
right, and I said But I wanted to wait for him here, and then
one of the men behind us said Damn it, get him on out of
here, and we went on. I was riding on the man's back and
then I could look back and see the six men in the moonlight
carrying the blind with the bundle on it, and I said Did it
belong to Uncle Rodney? and the man said No, if it be-
longed to anybody now it belonged to Grandpa. And so
then I knew what it was.

"It's a side of beef," I said. "You are going to take it to
Grandpa." Then the other man made a funny sound and the
one I was riding on said Yes, you might call it a side of beef,
and I said, "It's a Christmas present for Grandpa. Who is it
going to be from? Is it from Uncle Rodney?"

"No," the man said. "Not from him. Call it from the men
of Mottstown. From all the husbands in Mottstown."

VI

THEN WE CAME in sight of Grandpa's house. And now the
lights were all on, even on the porch, and I could see folks
in the hall, I could see ladies with shawls over their heads,,
and some more of them going up the walk toward the porch,
and then I could hear somebody in the house that sounded
like singing and then papa came out of the house and came
down the walk to the gate and we came up and the man put
me down and I saw Rosie waiting at the gate too. Only it
didn't sound like singing now because there wasn't any music

That Will Be Fine 287

with it, and so maybe it was Aunt Louisa again and so maybe
she didn't like Christmas now any better than Grandpa said
he didn't like it.

"It's a present for Grandpa," I said.

"Yes," papa said. "You go on with Rosie and go to bed.
Mamma will be there soon. But you be a good boy until she
comes. You mind Rosie. All right, Rosie. Take him on.
Hurry."

"You don't need to tell me that," Rosie said. She took my
hand. "Come on."

Only we didn't go back into the yard, because Rosie came
out the gate and we went up the street. And then I thought
maybe we were going around the back to dodge the people
and we didn't do that, either. We just went on up the street,
and I said, "Where are we going?"

And Rosie said, "We gonter sleep at a lady's house name
Mrs. Jordon."

So we went on. I didn't say anything. Because papa had
forgotten to say anything about my slipping out of the house
yet and so maybe if I went on to bed and stayed quiet he
would forget about it until tomorrow too. And besides, the
main thing was to get a holt of Uncle Rodney and get my
twenty quarters before we went back home, and so maybe
that would be all right tomorrow too. So we went on and
Rosie said Yonder's the house, and we went in the yard and
then all of a sudden Rosie saw the possum. It was in a persim-
mon tree in Mrs. Jordon's yard and I could see it against the
moonlight too, and I hollered, "Run! Run and get Mrs. Jor-
don's ladder!"

And Rosie said, "Ladder my foot! You going to bed!"

But I didn't wait. I began to run toward the house, with
Rosie running behind me and hollering You, Georgie! You
come back here! But I didn't stop. We could get the ladder
and get the possum and give it to Grandpa along with the

288 The Village

side of meat and it wouldn't cost even a dime and then maybe
Grandpa might even give me a quarter too, and then when I
got the twenty quarters from Uncle Rodney I would have
twenty-one quarters and that will be fine.

That Evening Sun

i

MONDAY is NO DIFFERENT from any other weekday in Jeffer-
son now. The streets are paved now, and the telephone and
electric companies are cutting down more and more of the
shade trees — the water oaks, the maples and locusts and elms
— to make room for iron poles bearing clusters of bloated and
ghostly and bloodless grapes, and we have a city laundry
which makes the rounds on Monday morning, gathering the
bundles of clothes into bright-colored, specially-made motor
cars: the soiled wearing of a whole week now flees appari-
tionlike behind alert and irritable electric horns, with a long
diminishing noise of rubber and asphalt like tearing silk, and
even the Negro women who still take in white people's
washing after the old custom, fetch and deliver it in auf.o-
mobiles.

But fifteen years ago, on Monday morning the quiet,
dusty, shady streets would be full of Negro women with,
balanced on their steady, turbaned heads, bundles of clothes
tied up in sheets, almost as large as cotton bales, carried so
without touch of hand between the kitchen door of the white
house and the jlackened washpot beside a cabin door in
Negro Hollow.

Nancy would set her bundle on the top of her head, then
upon the bundle in turn she would set the black straw sailor

289

290 The Village

hat which she wore winter and summer. She was tall, with a
high, sad face sunken a little where her teeth were missing.
Sometimes we would go a part of the way down the lane and
across the pasture with her, to watch the balanced bundle
and the hat that never bobbed nor wavered, even when she
walked down into the ditch and up the other side and stooped
through the fence. She would go down on her hands and
knees and crawl through the gap, her head rigid, uptilted,
the bundle steady as a rock or a balloon, and rise to her feet
again and go on.

Sometimes the husbands of the washing women would
fetch and deliver the clothes, but Jesus never did that for
Nancy, even before father told him to stay away from our
house, even when Dilsey was sick and Nancy would come to
cook for us.

And then about half the time we'd have to go down the
lane to Nancy's cabin and tell her to come on and cook
breakfast. We would stop at the ditch, because father told
us to not have anything to do with Jesus — he was a short
black man, with a razor scar down his face — and we would
throw rocks at Nancy's house until she came to the door,
leaning her head around it without any clothes on.

"What yawl mean, chunking my house?" Nancy said.
"What you little devils mean?"

"Father says for you to come on and get breakfast," Caddy
said. "Father says it's over a half an hour now, and you've
got to come this minute."

"I aint studying no breakfast," Nancy said. "I going tc
get my sleep out."

"I bet you're drunk," Jason said. "Father says you're
drunk. Are you drunk, Nancy?"

"Who says I is?" Nancy said. "I got to get my sleep out
1 dint studying no breakfast."

That Evening Sun 291

So after a while we quit chunking the cabin and went back
home. When she finally came, it was too late for me to go to
school. So we thought it was whisky until that day they ar-
rested her again and they were taking her to jail and they
passed Mr Stovall. He was the cashier in the bank and a dea-
con in the Baptist church, and Nancy began to say:

"When you going to pay me, white man? When you going
to pay me, white man? It's been three times now since you
paid me a cent — " Mr Stovall knocked her down, but she
kept on saying, "When you going to pay me, white man? It's
been three times now since — " until Mr Stovall kicked her
in the mouth with his heel and the marshal caught Mr Stovall
back, and Nancy lying in the street, laughing. She turned
her head and spat out some blood and teeth and said, "It's
oeen three times now since he paid me a cent."

That was how she lost her teeth, and all that day they told
about Nancy and Mr Stovall, and all that night the ones that
passed the jail could hear Nancy singing and yelling. They
could see her hands holding to the window bars, and a lot of
them stopped along the fence, listening to her and to the
jailer trying to make her stop. She didn't shut up until almost
daylight, when the jailer began to hear a bumping and scrap-
ing upstairs and he went up there and found Nancy hanging
from the window bar. He said that it was cocaine and not
whisky, because no nigger would try to commit suicide un-
less he was full of cocaine, because a nigger full of cocaine
wasn't a nigger any longer.

The jailer cut her down and revived her; then he beat her,
whipped her. She had hung herself with her dress. She had
fixed it all right, but when they arrested her she didn't have
on anything except a dress and so she didn't have anything
to tie her hands with and she couldn't make her hands let go
of the window ledge. So the jailer heard the noise and ran up
there and found Nancy hanging from the window, stark

292 The Village

naked, her belly already swelling out a little, like a little
balloon.

When Dilsey was sick in her cabin and Nancy was cook-
ing for us, we could see her apron swelling out; that was
before father told Jesus to stay away from the house. Jesus
was in the kitchen, sitting behind the stove, with his razor
scar on his black face like a piece of dirty string. He said it
was a watermelon that Nancy had under her dress.

"It never come off of your vine, though," Nancy said.

"Off of what vine?" Caddy said.

"I can cut down the vine it did come off of," Jesus said.

"What makes you want to talk like that before these chil-
len?" Nancy said. "Whyn't you go on to work? You done et.
You want Mr Jason to catch you hanging around his kitchen,
talking that way before these chillen?"

"Talking what way?" Caddy said. "What vine?"

"I cant hang around white man's kitchen," Jesus said. "But
white man can hang around mine. White man can come in
my house, but I cant stop him. When white man want to
come in my house, I aint got no house. I cant stop him, but he
cant kick me outen it. He cant do that."

Dilsey was still sick in her cabin. Father told Jesus to stay
off our place. Dilsey was still sick. It was a long time. We
were in the library after supper.

"Isn't Nancy through in the kitchen yet?" mother said.
"It seems to me that she has had plenty of time to have
finished the dishes."

"Let Quentin go and see," father said. "Go and see if
Nancy is through, Quentin. Tell her she can go on home."

I went to the kitchen. Nancy was through. The dishes
were put away and the fire was out. Nancy was sitting in a
chair, close to the cold stove. She looked at me.

"Mother wants to know if you are through," I said.

"Yes," Nancy said. She looked at me, "I done finished."
She looked at me.

Thai Evening Sun 293

"What is it?" I said. "What is it?"

"I aint nothing but a nigger," Nancy said. "It aint none of
my fault."

She looked at me, sitting in the chair before the cold stove,
the sailor hat on her head. I went back to the library. It was
the cold stove and all, when you think of a kitchen being
warm and busy and cheerful. And with a cold stove and the
dishes all put away, and nobody wanting to eat at that hour.

"Is she through?" mother said.

"Yessum," I said.

"What is she doing?" mother said.

"She's not doing anything. She's through."

"I'll go and see," father said.

"Maybe she's waiting for Jesus to come and take her
home," Caddy said.

"Jesus is gone," I said. Nrncy told us how one morning
she woke up and Jesus was gone.

"He quit me," Nancy said. "Done gone to Memphis, I
reckon. Dodging them city p<?-lice for a while, I reckon."

"And a good riddance," father said. "I hope he stays
there."

"Nancy's scaired of the dark," Jason said.

"So are you," Caddy said.

"I'm not," Jason said.

"Scairy cat," Caddy said.

"I'm not," Jason said.

"You, Candace!" mother said. Father came back.

"I am going to walk down the lane with Nancy," he said.
"She says that Jesus is back."

"Has she seen him?" mother said.

"No. Some Negro sent her word that he was back in town.
I wont be long."

"You'll leave me alone, to take Nancy home?" mother said.
"Is her safety more precious to you than mine?"

"I wont be long," father said.

294 The Village

"You'll leave these children unprotected, with that Negro
about?"

"I'm going too," Caddy said. "Let me go, Father."

"What would he do with them, if he were unfortunate
enough to have them?" father said.

"I want to go, too," Jason said.

"Jason!" mother said. She was speaking to father. You
could tell that by the way she said the name. Like she be-
lieved that all day father had been trying to think of doing
the thing she wouldn't like the most, and that she knew all
the time that after a while he would think of it. I stayed quiet,
because father and I both knew that mother would want
him to make me stay with her if she just thought of it in
time. So father didn't look at me. I was the oldest. I was nine
and Caddy was seven and Jason was five.

"Nonsense," father said. "We wont be long."

Nancy had her hat on. We came to the lane. "Jesus always
been good to me," Nancy said. "Whenever he had two dol-
lars, one of them was mine." We walked in the lane. "If I
can just get through the lane," Nancy said, "I be all right
then."

The lane was always dark. "This is where Jason got scared
on Hallowe'en," Caddy said.

"I didn't," Jason said.

"Cant Aunt Rachel do anything with him?" father said.
Aunt Rachel was old. She lived in a cabin beyond Nancy's,
by herself. She had white hair and she smoked a pipe in the
door, all day long; she didn't work any more. They said she
was Jesus' mother. Sometimes she said she was and some-
times she said she wasn't any kin to Jesus.

"Yes, you did," Caddy said. "You were scairder than
Frony. You were scairder than T.P even. Scairder than
niggers."

"Cant nobody do nothing with him," Nancy said. "He say

That Evening Sun 295

I done woke up the devil in him and aint but one thing going
to lay it down again."

"Well, he's gone now," father said. "There's nothing for
you to be afraid of now. And if you'd just let white men
alone."

"Let what white men alone?" Caddy said. "How let them
alone?"

"He aint gone nowhere," Nancy said. "I can feel him. I
can feel him now, in this lane. He hearing us talk, every
word, hid somewhere, waiting. I aint seen him, and I aint
going to see him again but once more, with that razor in his
mouth. That razor on that string down his back, inside his
shirt. And then I aint going to be even surprised."

"I wasn't scaired," Jason said.

"If you'd behave yourself, you'd have kept out of this,"
father said. "But it's all right now. He's probably in St. Louis
now. Probably got another wife by now and forgot all about
you."

"If he has, I better not find out about it," Nancy said. "I'd
stand there right over them, and every time he wropped her,
I'd cut that arm off. I'd cut his head off and I'd slit her belly
and I'd shove—"

"Hush," father said.

"Slit whose belly, Nancy?" Caddy said.

"I wasn't scaired," Jason said. "I'd walk right down this
lane by myself."

"Yah," Caddy said. "You wouldn't dare to put your foot
down in it if we were not here too."

II

DILSEY WAS STILL SICK, so we took Nancy home every night
until mother said, "How much longer is this going on? I to

296 The Village

be left alone in this big house while you take home a fright-
ened Negro?"

We fixed a pallet in the kitchen for Nancy. One night we
waked up, hearing the sound. It was not singing and it waj>
not crying, coming up the dark stairs. There was a light in
mother's room and we heard father going down the hall,
down the back stairs, and Caddy and I went into the hall.
The floor was cold. Our toes curled away from it while we
listened to the sound. It was like singing and it wasn't like
singing, like the sounds that Negroes make.

Then it stopped and we heard father going down the back
stairs, and we went to the head of the stairs. Then the sound
began again, in the stairway, not loud, and we could see
Nancy's eyes halfway up the stairs, against the wall They
looked like cat's eyes do, like a big cat against the wall,
watching us. When we came down the steps to where she
was, she quit making the sound again, and we stood there
until father came back up from the kitchen, with his pistol in
his hand. He went back down with Nancy and they came
back with Nancy's pallet.

We spread the pallet in our room. After the light in
mother's room went off, we could see Nancy's eyes again.
"Nancy," Caddy whispered, "are you asleep, Nancy?"

Nancy whispered something. It was oh or no, I dont know
which. Like nobody had made it, like it came from nowhere
and went nowhere, until it was like Nancy was not there at
all; that I had looked so hard at her eyes on the stairs that
they had got printed on my eyeballs, like the sun does when
you have closed your eyes and there is no sun. "Jesus,"
Nancy whispered. "Jesus."

"Was it Jesus?" Caddy said. "Did he try to come into the
kitchen?"

"Jesus," Nancy said. Like this: Jeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeesus, until
the sound went out, like a match or a candle does.

That Evening Sun 297

"It's the other Jesus she means," I said.

"Can you see us, Nancy?" Caddy whispered. "Can you
see our eyes too?"

"I aint nothing but a nigger," Nancy said. "God knows.
God knows."

"What did you see down there in the kitchen?" Caddy
whispered. "What tried to get in?"

"God knows," Nancy said. We could see her eyes. "God
knows."

Dilsey got well. She cooked dinner. "You'd better stay in
bed a day or two longer," father said.

"What for?" Dilsey said. "If I had been a day later, this
place would be to rack and ruin. Get on out of here now.
and let me get my kitchen straight again."

Dilsey cooked supper too. And that night, just before
dark, Nancy came into the kitchen.

"How do you know he's back?" Dilsey said. "You aint
seen him."

"Jesus is a nigger," Jason said.

"I can feel him," Nancy said. "I can feel him laying yonder
in the ditch."

"Tonight?" Dilsey said. "Is he there tonight?"

"Dilsey's a nigger too," Jason said.

"You try to eat something," Dilsey said.

"I dont want nothing," Nancy said.

"I aint a nigger," Jason said.

"Drink some coffee," Dilsey said. She poured a cup of
coffee for Nancy. "Do you know he's out there tonight?
How come you know it's tonight?"

"I know," Nancy said. "He's there, waiting. I know. I
done lived with him too long. I know what he is fixing to do
fore he know it himself."

"Drink some coffee," Dilsey said. Nancy held the cup to
her mouth and blew into the cup. Her mouth pursed out

298 The Village

like a spreading adder's, like a rubber mouth, like she had

blown all the color out of her lips with blowing the coffee.

"I aint a nigger," Jason said. "Are you a nigger, Nancy?"

"I hellborn, child," Nancy said. "I wont be nothing soon.

I going back where I come from soon."

Ill

SHE BEGAN TO DRINK the coffee. While she was drinking, hold-
ing the cup in both hands, she began to make the sound again.
She made the sound into the cup and the coffee sploshed out
onto her hands and her dress. Her eyes looked at us and she
sat there, her elbows on her knees, holding the cup in both
hands, looking at us across the wet cup, making the sound.
"Look at Nancy," Jason said. "Nancy cant cook for us now.
Dilsey's got well now."

"You hush up," Dilsey said. Nancy held the cup in both
hands, looking at us, making the sound, like there were two
of them: one looking at us and the other making the sound.
"Whyn't you let Mr Jason telefoam the marshal?" Dilsey
said. Nancy stopped then, holding the cup in her long brown
hands. She tried to drink some coffee again, but it sploshed
out of the cup, onto her hands and her dress, and she put the
cup down. Jason watched her.

"I cant swallow it," Nancy said. "I swallows but it wont
go down me."

"You go down to the cabin," Dilsey said. "Frony will fix
you a pallet and I'll be there soon."

"Wont no nigger stop him," Nancy said.

"I aint a nigger," Jason said. "Am I, Dilsey?"

"I reckon not," Dilsey said. She looked at Nancy. "I dont
reckon so. What you going to do, then?"

Nancy looked at us. Her eyes went fast, like she was afraid

That Evening Sun 299

there wasn't time to look, without hardly moving at all. She
looked at us, at all three of us at one time. "You member that
night I stayed in yawls' room?" she said. She told about how
we waked up early the next morning, and played. We had
to play quiet, on her pallet, until father woke up and it was
time to get breakfast. "Go and ask your maw to let me stay
here tonight," Nancy said. "I wont need no pallet. We can
play some more."

Caddy asked mother. Jason went too. "I cant have
Negroes sleeping in the bedrooms," mother said. Jason cried.
He cried until mother said he couldn't have any dessert for
three days if he didn't stop. Then Jason said he would stop
if Dilsey would make a chocolate cake. Father was there.

"Why dont you do something about it?" mother said.
"What do we have officers for?"

"Why is Nancy afraid of Jesus?" Caddy said. "Are you
afraid of father, mother?"

"What could the officers do?" father said. "If Nancy
hasn't seen him, how could the officers find him?"

"Then why is she afraid?" mother said.

"She says he is there. She says she knows he is there
tonight."

"Yet we pay taxes," mother said. "I must wait here alone
in this big house while you take a Negro woman home."

"You know that I am not lying outside with a razor,"
father said.

"I'll stop if Dilsey will make a chocolate cake," Jason
said. Mother told us to go out and father said he didn't
know if Jason would get a chocolate cake or not, but he
knew what Jason was going to get in about a minute. We
went back to the kitchen and told Nancy.

"Father said for you to go home and lock the door, and
you'll be all right," Caddy said. "All right from what,
Nancy? Is Jesus mad at you?" Nancy was holding the coffee

300 The Village

cup in her hands again, her elbows on her knees and her
hands holding the cup between her knees. She was looking
into the cup. "What have you done that made Jesus mad?"
Caddy said. Nancy let the cup go. It didn't break on the
floor, but the coffee spilled out, and Nancy sat there with
her hands still making the shape of the cup. She began to
make the sound again, not loud. Not singing and not unsing-
ing. We watched her.

"Here," Dilsey said. "You quit that, now. You get aholt
of yourself. You wait here. I going to get Versh to vvalk
home with you." Dilsey went out.

We looked at Nancy. Her shoulders kept shaking, but
she quit making the sound. We watched her. "What's
Jesus going to do to you?" Caddy said. "He went away,"

Nancy looked at us. "We had fun that night I stayed
in yawls' room, didn't we?"

"I didn't," Jason said. "I didn't have any fun."

"You were asleep in mother's room," Caddy said. "You
were not there."

"Let's go down to my house and have some more fun,"
Nancy said.

"Mother wont let us," I said. "It's too late now."

"Dont bother her," Nancy said. "We can tell her in the
morning. She wont mind."

"She wouldn't let us," I said.

"Dont ask her now," Nancy said. "Dont bother her now."

"She didn't say we couldn't go," Caddy said.

"We didn't ask," I said.

"If you go, I'll tell," Jason said.

"We'll have fun," Nancy said. "They won't mind, just to
my house. I been working for yawl a long time. They won't
mind."

"I'm not afraid to go," Caddy said. "Jason is the one that's
afraid. He'll tell."

That Evening Sun 301

"I'm not," Jason said.

"Yes, you are," Caddy said. "You'll tell."

"I won't tell," Jason said. "I'm not afraid."

"Jason ain't afraid to go with me," Nancy said. "Is you,
Jason?"

"Jason is going to tell," Caddy said. The lane was dark.
We passed the pasture gate. "I bet if something was to jump
out from behind that gate, Jason would holler."

"I wouldn't," Jason said. We walked down the lane.
Nancy was talking loud.

"What are you talking so loud for, Nancy?" Caddy said.

"Who; me?" Nancy said. "Listen at Quentin and Caddy
and Jason saying I'm talking loud."

"You talk like there was five of us here," Caddy said. "You
talk like father was here too."

"Who; me talking loud, Mr Jason?" Nancy said.

"Nancy called Jason 'Mister,' " Caddy said.

"Listen how Caddy and Quentin and Jason talk," Nancy
said.

"We're not talking loud," Caddy said. "You're the one
that's talking like father — "

"Hush," Nancy said; "hush, Mr Jason."

"Nancy called Jason 'Mister' aguh — "

"Hush," Nancy said. She was talking loud when WQ
crossed the ditch and stooped through the fence where she
used to stoop through with the clothes on her head. Then we
came to her house. We were going fast then. She opened the
door. The smell of the house was like the lamp and the smell
of Nancy was like the wick, like they were waiting for one
another to begin to smell. She lit the lamp and closed the
door and put the bar up. Then she quit talking loud, looking
at us.

"What're we going to do? " Caddy said.

302 The Village

"What do yawl want to do?" Nancy said.

"You said we would have some fun," Caddy said.

There was something about Nancy's house; something you
could smell besides Nancy and the house. Jason smelled it,
even. "I don't want to stay here," he said. "I want to go
home."

"Go home, then," Caddy said.

"I don't want to go by myself," Jason said.

"We're going to have some fun," Nancy said.

"How?" Caddy said.

Nancy stood by the door. She was looking at us, only it
was like she had emptied her eyes, like she had quit using
them. "What do you want to do?" she said.

"Tell us a story," Caddy said. "Can you tell a story?"

"Yes," Nancy said.

"Tell it," Caddy said. We looked at Nancy. "You don't
know any stories."

"Yes," Nancy said. "Yes, I do."

She came and sat in a chair before the hearth. There was a
little fire there. Nancy built it up, when it was already hot
inside. She built a good blaze. She told a story. She talked
like her eyes looked, like her eyes watching us and her voice
talking to us did not belong to her. Like she was living some-
where else, waiting somewhere else. She was outside the
cabin. Her voice was inside and the shape of her, the Nancy
that could stoop under a barbed wire fence with a bundle of
clothes balanced on her head as though without weight, like
a balloon, was there. But that was all. "And so this here
queen come walking up to the ditch, where that bad man was
hiding. She was walking up to the ditch, and she say, 'If I can
just get past this here ditch,' was what she say . . ."

"What ditch?" Caddy said. "A ditch like that one out
there? Why did a queen want to go into a ditch?"

"To get to her house," Nancy said. She looked at us. "She

That Evening Sun 303

had to cross the ditch to get into her house quick and bar
the door."

"Why did she want to go home and bar the door?" Caddy
said.

IV

NANCY LOOKED at us. She quit talking. She looked at us.
Jason's legs stuck straight out of his pants where he sat on
Nancy's lap. "I don't think that's a good story," he said. "I
want to go home."

"Maybe we had better," Caddy said. She got up from the
floor. "I bet they are looking for us right now." She went
toward the door.

"No," Nancy said. "Don't open it." She got up quick and
passed Caddy. She didn't touch the door, the wooden bar.

"Why not?" Caddy said.

"Come back to the lamp," Nancy said. "We'll have fun.
You don't have to go."

"We ought to go," Caddy said. "Unless we have a lot of
fun." She and Nancy came back to the fire, the lamp.

"I want to go home," Jason said. "I'm going to tell."

"I know another story," Nancy said. She stood close to
the lamp. She looked at Caddy, like when your eyes look up
at a stick balanced on your nose. She had to look down to
see Caddy, but her eyes looked like that, like when you are
balancing a stick.

"I won't listen to it," Jason said. "I'll bang on the floor."

"It's a good one," Nancy said. "It's better than the other
one."

"What's it about?" Caddy said. Nancy was standing by
the lamp. Her hand was on the lamp, against the light, long
and brown.

"Your hand is on that hot crlobe." Caddv said. "Don't it
feel hot to your hand?"

304 The Village

Nancy looked at her hand on the lamp chimney. She took
her hand away, slow. She stood there, looking at Caddy,
wringing her long hand as though it were tied to her wrist
with a string.

"Let's do something else," Caddy said.

"I want to go home," Jason said.

"I got some popcorn," Nancy said. She looked at Caddy
and then at Jason and then at me and then at Caddy again.
"I got some popcorn."

"I don't like popcorn," Jason said. "I'd rather have candy."

Nancy looked at Jason. "You can hold the popper." She
was still wringing her hand; it was long and limp and brown.

"All right," Jason said. "I'll stay a while if I can do that.
Caddy can't hold it. I'll want to go home again if Caddy
holds the popper."

Nancy built up the fire. "Look at Nancy putting her
hands in the fire," Caddy said. "What's the matter with you,
Nancy?"

"I got popcorn," Nancy said. "I got some." She took the
popper from under the bed. It was broken. Jason began to
cry.

"Now we can't have any popcorn," he said.

"We ought to go home, anyway," Caddy said. "Come on,
Quentin."

"Wait," Nancy said; "wait. I can fix it. Don't you want
to help me fix it?"

"I don't think I want any," Caddy said. "It's too late now."

"You help me, Jason," Nancy said. "Don't you want to
help me?"

"No," Jason said. "I want to go home."

"Hush," Nancy said; "hush. Watch. Watch me. I can fix
it so Jason can hold it and pop the corn." She got a piece of
wire and fixed the popper.

That Evening Sun 305

"It won't hold good," Caddy said.

"Yes, it will," Nancy said. "Yawl watch. Yawl help me
shell some corn."

The popcorn was under the bed too. We shelled it into the
popper and Nancy helped Jason hold the popper over the
fire.

"It's not popping," Jason said. "I want to go home."

"You wait," Nancy said. "It'll begin to pop. We'll have
fun then." She was sitting close to the fire. The lamp was
turned up so high it was beginning to smoke.

"Why don't you turn it down some?" I said.

"It's all right," Nancy said. "I'll clean it. Yawl wait. The
popcorn will start in a minute."

"I don't believe it's going to start," Caddy said. "We ought
to start home, anyway. They'll be worried."

"No," Nancy said. "It's going to pop. Dilsey will tell um
yawl with me. I been working for yawl long time. They
won't mind if yawl at my house. You wait, now. It'll start
popping any minute now."

Then Jason got some smoke in his eyes and he began to
cry. He dropped the popper into the fire. Nancy got a wet
rag ard wiped Jason's face, but he didn't stop crying.

"Hush," she said. "Hush." But he didn't hush. Caddy took
the popper out of the fire.

"It's burned up," she said. "You'll have to get some more
popcorn, Nancy."

"Did you put all of it in?" Nancy said.

"Yes," Caddy said. Nancy looked at Caddy. Then she
took the popper and opened it and poured the cinders into
her apron and began to sort the grains, her hands long and
brown, and we watching her.

"Haven't you got any more?" Caddy said.

"Yes," Nancy said; "yes. Look. This here ain't burnt. All
we need to do is — "

306 The Village

"I want to go home," Jason said. "I'm going to tell"

"Hush," Caddy said. We all listened. Nancy's head was
already turned toward the barred door, her eyes filled with
red lamplight. "Somebody is coming," Caddy said.

Then Nancy began to make that sound again, not loud,
sitting there above the fire, her long hands dangling between
her knees; all of a sudden water began to come out on her
face in big drops, running down her face, carrying in each
one a little turning ball of firelight like a spark until it
dropped off her chin. "She's not crying," I said.

"I ain't crying," Nancy said. Her eyes were closed. "I ain't
crying. Who is it?"

"I don't know," Caddy said. She went to the door and
looked out. "We've got to go now," she said. "Here comes
father."

"I'm going to tell," Jason said. "Yawl made me come."

The water still ran down Nancy's face. She turned in her
chair. "Listen. Tell him. Tell him we going to have fun. Tell
him I take good care of yawl until in the morning. Tell him
to let me come home with yawl and sleep on the floor. Tell
him I won't need no pallet. We'll have fun. You member
last time how we had so much fun?"

"I didn't have fun," Jason said. "You hurt me. You put
smoke in my eyes. I'm going to tell."

V

FATHER CAME IN. He looked at us. Nancy did not get up.
"Tell him," she said.
"Caddy made us come down here," Jason said. "I didn't

want to."

Father came to the fire. Nancy looked up at him. "Can't
you go to Aunt Rachel's and stay?" he said. Nancy looked
up at father, her hands between her knees. "He's not here,"

That Evening Sun 307

father said. "I would have seen him. There's not a soul in
sight."

"He in the ditch," Nancy said. "He waiting in the ditch
yonder."

"Nonsense," father said. He looked at Nancy. "Do you
know he's there?"

"I got the sign," Nancy said.

"What sign?"

"I got it. It was on the table when I come in. It was a hog-
bone, with blood meat still on it, laying by the lamp. He's
out there. When yawl walk out that door, I gone."

"Gone where, Nancy?" Caddy said.

"I'm not a tattletale," Jason said.

"Nonsense," father said.

"He out there," Nancy said. "He looking through that
window this minute, waiting for yawl to go. Then I gone."

"Nonsense," father said. "Lock up your house and we'll
take you on to Aunt Rachel's."

" 'Twont do no good," Nancy said. She didn't look at
father now, but he looked down at her, at her long, limp,
moving hands. "Putting it off wont do no good."

"Then what do you want to do?" father said.

"I don't know," Nancy said. "I can't do nothing. Just put
it off. And that don't do no good. I reckon it belong to me.
I reckon what I going to get ain't no more than mine."

"Get what?" Caddy said. "What's yours?"

"Nothing," father said. "You all must get to bed."

"Caddy made me come," Jason said.

"Go on to Aunt Rachel's," father said.

"It won't do no good," Nancy said. She sat before the
fire, her elbows on her knees, her long hands between her
knees. "When even your own kitchen wouldn't do no good.
When even if I was sleeping on the floor in the room with
your chillen, and the next morning there I am, and blood — "

The Village

"Hush," father said. "Lock the door and put out the lamp
and go to bed."

"I scared of the dark," Nancy said. "I scared for it to hap-
pen in the dark."

"You mean you're going to sit right here with the lamp
lighted?" father said. Then Nancy began to make the sound
again, sitting before the fire, her long hands between her
knees. "Ah, damnation," father said. "Come along, chillen.
It's past bedtime."

"When yawl go home, I gone," Nancy said. She talked
quieter now, and her face looked quiet, like her hands. "Any-
way, I got my coffin money saved up with Mr. Lovelady."
Mr. Lovelady was a short, dirty man who collected the
Negro insurance, coming around to the cabins or the
kitchens every Saturday morning, to collect fifteen cents. He
and his wife lived at the hotel. One morning his wife com-
mitted suicide. They had a child, a little girl. He and the
child went away. After a week or two he came back alone.
We would see him going along the lanes and the back streets
on Saturday mornings.

"Nonsense," father said. "You'll be the first thing I'll see
in the kitchen tomorrow morning."

"You'll see what you'll see, I reckon," Nancy said. "But
it will take the Lord to say what that will be."

VI

WE LEFT HER sitting before the fire.

"Come and put the bar up," father said. But she didn't
move. She didn't look at us again, sitting quietly there be-
tween the lamp and the fire. From some distance down the
lane we could look back and see her through the open door.
"What, Father?" Caddy said. "What's going to happen?"
"Nothing," father said. Jason was on father's back, so

That Evening Sun 309

Jason was the tallest of all of us. We went down into the
ditch. I looked at it, quiet. I couldn't see much where the
moonlight and the shadows tangled.

"If Jesus is hid here, he can see us, cant he?" Caddy said.

"He's not there," father said. "He went away a long time
ago."

"You made me come," Jason said, high; against the sky it
looked like father had two heads, a little one and a big one.
"I didn't want to."

We went up out of the ditch. We could still see Nancy's
house and the open door, but we couldn't see Nancy now,
sitting before the fire with the door open, because she was
tired. "I just done got tired," she said. "I just a nigger. It
ain't no fault of mine."

But we could hear her, because she began just after we
came up out of the ditch, the sound that was not singing and
not unsinging. "Who will do our washing now, Father?"
I said.

"I'm not a nigger," Jason said, high and close above
father's head.

"You're worse," Caddy said, "you are a tattletale. If some-
thing was to jump out, you'd be scairder than a nigger."

"I wouldn't," Jason said.

"You'd cry," Caddy said.

"Caddy," father said.

"I wouldn't!" Jason said.

"Scairy cat," Caddy said.

"Candace!" father said.

Ill • THE WILDERNESS

Red Leaves

A Justice

A Courtship

Lol

Red Leaves

i

THE TWO INDIANS crossed the plantation toward the slave
quarters. Neat with whitewash, of baked soft brick, the two
rows of houses in which lived the slaves belonging to the
clan, faced one another across the mild shade of the lane
marked and scored with naked feet and with a few home-
made toys mute in the dust. There was no sign of life.

"I know what we will find," the first Indian said.

"What we will not find," the second said. Although it
was noon, the lane was vacant, the doors of the cabins empty
and quiet; no cooking smoke rose from any of the chinked
and plastered chimneys.

"Yes. It happened like this when the father of him who is
now the Man, died."

"You mean, of him who was the Man."

"Yao."

The first Indian's name was Three Basket. He was per-
haps sixty. They were both squat men, a little solid, burgher-
like; paunchy, with big heads, big, broad, dust-colored faces
of a certain blurred serenity like carved heads on a ruined
wall in Siam or Sumatra, looming out of a mist. The sun had
done it, the violent sun, the violent shade. Their hair looked
like sedge grass on burnt-over land. Clamped through one
ear Three Basket wore an enameled snuffbox.

3'3

314 The Wilderness

"I have said all the time that this is not the good way. In
the old days there were no quarters, no Negroes. A man's
time was his own then. He had time. Now he must spend
most of it finding work for them who prefer sweating to do/'

"They are like horses and dogs."

"They are like nothing in this sensible world. Nothing
contents them save sweat. They are worse than the white
people."

"It is not as though the Man himself had to find work for
them to do."

"You said it. I do not like slavery. It is not the good way.
In the old days, there was the good way. But not now."

"You do not remember the old way either."

"I have listened to them who do. And I have tried this
way. Man was not made to sweat."

"That's so. See what it has done to their flesh."

"Yes. Black. It has a bitter taste, too."

"You have eaten of it?"

"Once. I was young then, and more hardy in the appetite
than now. Now it is different with me."

"Yes. They are too valuable to eat now."

"There is a bitter taste to the flesh which I do not like."

"They are too valuable to eat, anyway, when the white
men will give horses for them."

They entered the lane. The mute, meager toys — the
fetish-shaped objects made of wood and rags and feathers —
lay in the dust about the patinaed doorsteps, among bones
and broken gourd dishes. But there was no sound from any
cabin, no face in any door; had not been since yesterday,
when Issetibbeha died. But they already knew what they
would find.

It was in the central cabin, a house a little larger than the
others, where at certain phases of the moon the Negroes
would gather to begin their ceremonies before removing

Red Leaves 3 1 5

after nightfall to the creek bottom, where they kept the
drums. In this room they kept the minor accessories, the
cryptic ornaments, the ceremonial records which consisted
of sticks daubed with red clay in symbols. It had a hearth in
the center of the floor, beneath a hole in the roof, with a few
cold wood ashes and a suspended iron pot. The window
shutters were closed; when the two Indians entered, after
the abashless sunlight they could distinguish nothing with the
•eyes save a movement, shadow, out of which eyeballs rolled,
so that the place appeared to be full of Negroes. The two
Indians stood in the doorway.

"Yao," Basket said. "I said this is not the good way."

"I don't think I want to be here," the second said.

"That is black man's fear which you smell. It does not
smell as ours does."

"I don't think I want to be here."

"Your fear has an odor too."

"Maybe it is Issetibbeha which we smell."

"Yao. He knows. He knows what we will find here. He
knew when he died what we should find here today." Out
of the rank twilight of the room the eyes, the smell, of
Negroes rolled about them. "I am Three Basket, whom you
know," Basket said into the room. "We are come from the
Man. He whom we seek is gone?" The Negroes said nothing.
The smell of them, of their bodies, seemed to ebb and flux in
the still hot air. They seemed to be musing as one upon
something remote, inscrutable. They were like a single
octopus. They were like the roots of a huge tree uncovered,
the earth broken momentarily upon the writhen, thick, fetid
tangle of its lightless and outraged life. "Come," Basket said.
"You know our errand. Is he whom we seek gone?"

"They are thinking something," the second said. "I do
not want to be here."

"They are knowing something," Basket said.

316 The Wilderness

"They are hiding him, you think? "

"No. He is gone. He has been gone since last night. It hap-
pened like this before, when the grandfather of him who is
now the Man died. It took us three days to catch him. For
three days Doom lay above the ground, saying 1 see my
horse and my dog. But I do not see my slave. What have
you done with him that you will not permit me to lie
quiet?'"

"They do not like to die."

"Yao. They cling. It makes trouble for us, always. A
people without honor and without decorum. Always a
trouble."

"I do not like it here."

"Nor do I. But then, they are savages; they cannot be
expected to regard usage. That is why I say that this way
is a bad way."

"Yao. They cling. They would even rather work in the
sun than to enter the earth with a chief. But he is gone."

The Negroes had said nothing, made no sound. The
white eyeballs rolled, wild, subdued; the smell was rank,
violent. "Yes, they fear," the second said. "What shall we
do now?"

"Let us go and talk with the Man."

"Will Moketubbe listen?"

"What can he do? He will not like to. But he is the Man

now."

"Yao. He is the Man. He can wear the shoes with the red
heels all the time now." They turned and went out. There
was no door in the door frame. There were no doors in
any of the cabins.

"He did that anyway," Basket said.

"Behind Issetibbeha's back. But now they are his shoes,
since he is the Man."

"Yao. Issetibbeha did not like it. I have heard. I know that

Red Leaves 317

he said to Moketubbe: 'When you are the Man, the shoes
will be yours. But until then, they are my shoes.' But now
Moketubbe is the Man; he can wear them."

"Yao," the second said. "He is the Man now. He used to
wear the shoes behind Issetibbeha's back, and it was not
known if Issetibbeha knew this or not. And then Issetibbeha
became dead, who was not old, and the shoes are Moketub-
be's, since he is the Man now. What do you think of that?"

"I don't think about it," Basket said. "Do you?"

"No," the second said.

"Good," Basket said. "You are wise."

II

THE HOUSE sat on a knoll, surrounded by oak trees. The
front of it was one story in height, composed of the deck
house of a steamboat which had gone ashore and which
Doom, Issetibbeha's father, had dismantled with his slaves
and hauled on cypress rollers twelve miles home overland. It
took them five months. His house consisted at the time of one
brick wall. He set the steamboat broadside on to the wall,
where now the chipped and flaked gilding of the rococo
cornices arched in faint splendor above the gilt lettering of
the stateroom names above the jalousied doors.

Doom had been born merely a subchief, a Mingo, one of
three children on the mother's side of the family. He made
a journey — he was a young man then and New Orleans was
a European city — from north Mississippi to New Orleans
by keel boat, where he met the Chevalier Sceur Blonde de
Vitry, a man whose social position, on its face, was as
equivocal as Doom's own. In New Orleans, among the
gamblers and cutthroats of the river front, Doom, under the
tutelage of his patron, passed as the chief, the Man, the he-
reditary owner of that land which belonged to the male side

318 The Wilderness

of the family; it was the Chevalier de Vitry who called him
du homme, and hence Doom.

They were seen everywhere together — the Indian, the
squat man with a bold, inscrutable, underbred face, and the
Parisian, the expatriate, the friend, it was said, of Carondelet
and the intimate of General Wilkinson. Then they disap-
peared, the two of them, vanishing from their old equivocal
haunts and leaving behind them the legend of the sums
which Doom was believed to have won, and some tale about
a young woman, daughter of a fairly well-to-do West Indian
family, the son and brother of whom sought Doom with a
pistol about his old haunts for some time after his disappear-
ance.

Six months later the young woman herself disappeared,
boarding the St. Louis packet, which put in one night at
a wood landing on the north Mississippi side, where the
woman, accompanied by a Negro maid, got off. Four Indians
met her with a horse and wagon, and they traveled for three
days, slowly, since she was already big with child, to the
plantation, where she found that Doom was now chief. He
never told her how he accomplished it, save that his uncle
and his cousin had died suddenly. At that time the house
consisted of a brick wall built by shiftless slaves, against
which was propped a thatched lean-to divided into rooms
and littered with bones and refuse, set in the center of ten
thousand acres of matchless parklike forest where deer
grazed like domestic cattle. Doom and the woman \vere
married there a short time before Issetibbeha was born, by
a combination itinerant minister and slave trader who arrived
on a mule, to the saddle of which was lashed a cotton um-
brella and a three-gallon demijohn of whisky. After that,
Doom began to acquire more slaves and to cultivate some of
his land, as the white people did. But he never had enough
for them to do. In utter idleness the majority of them led
lives transplanted whole out of African jungles, save on the

Red Leaves 319

occasions when, entertaining guests, Doom coursed them
with dogs.

When Doom died, Issetibbeha, his son, was nineteen. He
became proprietor of the land and of the quintupled herd
of blacks for which he had no use at all. Though the title
of Man rested with him, there was a hierarchy of cousins
and uncles who ruled the clan and who finally gathered in
squatting conclave over the Negro question, squatting pro-
foundly beneath the golden names above the doors of the
steamboat.

"We cannot eat them," one said.

"Why not?"

"There are too many of them."

"That's true," a third said. "Once we started, we should
have to eat them all. And that much flesh diet is not good
for man."

"Perhaps they will be like deer flesh. That cannot hurt
you."

"We might kill a few of them and not eat them," Issetib-
beha said.

They looked at him for a while. "What for?" one said.

"That is true," a second said. "We cannot do that. They
are too valuable; remember all the bother they have caused
us, finding things for them to do. We must do as the white
men do."

"How is that?" Issetibbeha said.

"Raise more Negroes by clearing more land to make corn
to feed them, then sell them. We will clear the land and
plant it with food and raise Negroes and sell them to the
white men for money."

"But what will we do with this money?" a third said.

They thought for a while.

"We will see," the first said. They squatted, profound,
grave.

"It means work," the third said.

320 The Wilderness

"Let the Negroes do it," the first said.

"Yao. Let them. To sweat is bad. It is damp. It opens the
pores."

"And then the night air enters."

"Yao. Let the Negroes do it. They appear to like sweat-
ing."

So they cleared the land with the Negroes and planted
it in grain. Up to that time the slaves had lived in a huge
pen with a lean-to roof over one corner, like a pen for pigs.
But now they began to build quarters, cabins, putting the
young Negroes in the cabins in pairs to mate; five years
later Issetibbeha sold forty head to a Memphis trader, and
he took the money and went abroad upon it, his maternal
uncle from New Orleans conducting the trip. At that time
the Chevalier Soeur Blonde de Vitry was an old man in
Paris, in a toupee and a corset, with a careful toothless old
face fixed in a grimace quizzical and profoundly tragic. He
borrowed three hundred dollars from Issetibbeha and in
return he introduced him into certain circles; a year later
Issetibbeha returned home with a gilt bed, a pair of girandoles
by whose light it was said that Pompadour arranged her
hair while Louis smirked at his mirrored face across her
powdered shoulder, and a pair of slippers with red heels.
They were too small for him, since he had not worn shoes
at all until he reached New Orleans on his way abroad.

He brought the slippers home in tissue paper and kept them
in the remaining pocket of a pair of saddlebags filled with
cedar shavings, save when he took them out on occasion for
his son, Moketubbe, to play with. At three years of age
Moketubbe had a broad, flat, Mongolian face that appeared
to exist in a complete and unfathomable lethargy, until con-
fronted by the slippers.

Moketubbe's mother was a comely girl whom Issetibbeha
had seen one day working in her shift in a melon patch. He

Red Leaves 321

stopped and watched her for a while — the broad, solid thighs,
the sound back, the serene face. He was on his way to the
creek to fish that day, but he didn't go any farther; perhaps
while he stood there watching the unaware girl he may have
remembered his own mother, the city woman, the fugitive
with her fans and laces and her Negro blood, and all the
tawdry shabbiness of that sorry affair. Within the year
Moketubbe was born; even at three he could not get his feet
into the slippers. Watching him in the still, hot afternoons
as he struggled with the slippers with a certain monstrous
repudiation of fact, Issetibbeha laughed quietly to himself.
He laughed at Moketubbe and the shoes for several years,
because Moketubbe did not give up trying to put them on
until he was sixteen. Then he quit. Or Issetibbeha thought
he had. But he had merely quit trying in Issetibbeha's pres-
ence. Issetibbeha's newest wife told him that Moketubbe had
stolen and hidden the shoes. Issetibbeha quit laughing then,
and he sent the woman away, so that he was alone. "Yao,"
he said. "I too like being alive, it seems." He sent for Moke-
tubbe. "I give them to you," he said.

Moketubbe was twenty-five then, unmarried. Issetibbeha
was not tall, but he was taller by six inches than his son and
almost a hundred pounds lighter. Moketubbe was already
diseased with flesh, with a pale, broad, inert face and drop-
sical hands and feet. "They are yours now," Issetibbeha said,
watching him. Moketubbe had looked at him once when he
entered, a glance brief, discreet, veiled.

"Thanks," he said.

Issetibbeha looked at him. He could never tell if Moke-
tubbe saw anything, looked at anything. "Why will it not be
the same if I give the slippers to you?"

"Thanks," Moketubbe said. Issetibbeha was using snuff at
the time; a white man had shown him how to put the powder

322 The Wilderness:

into his lip and scour it against his teeth with a twig of gum
or of alphea.

"Well," he said, "a man cannot live forever." He looked
at his son, then his gaze went blank in turn, unseeing, and
he mused for an instant. You could not tell what he was
thinking, save that he said half aloud: "Yao. But Doom's
uncle had no shoes with red heels." He looked at his son
again, fat, inert. "Beneath all that, a man might think of
doing anything and it not be known until too late." He sat
in a splint chair hammocked with deer thongs. aHe cannot
even get them on; he and I are both frustrated by the same
gross meat which he wears. He cannot even get them on.
But is that my fault? "

He lived for five years longer, then he died. He was sick
one night, and though the doctor came in a skunk-skin vest
and burned sticks, he died before noon.

That was yesterday; the grave was dug, and for twelve
hours now the People had been coming in wagons and car-
riages and on horseback and afoot, to eat the baked dog and
the succotash and the yams cooked in ashes and to attend
the funeral.

Ill

"Ix WILL BE THREE DAYS," Basket said, as he and the other
Indian returned to the house. "It will be three days and the
food will not be enough; I have seen it before."

The second Indian's name was Louis Berry. "He will
smell too, in this weather."

"Yao. They are nothing but a trouble and a care."

"Maybe it will not take three days."

"They run far. Yao. We will smell this Man before he
enters the earth. You watch and see if I am not right."

They approached the house.

Red Leaves 323

"He can wear the shoes now," Berry said. "He can wear
them now in man's sight."

"He cannot wear them for a while yet," Basket said. Berry
looked at him. "He will lead the hunt."

"Moketubbe?" Berry said. "Do you think he will? A man
to whom even talking is travail?"

"What else can he do? It is his own father who will soon
begin to smell."

"That is true," Berry said. "There is even yet a price he
must pay for the shoes. Yao. He has truly bought them.
What do you think?"

"What do you think?"

"What do you think?"

"I think nothing."

"Nor do I. Issetibbeha will not need the shoes now. Let
Moketubbe have them; Issetibbeha will not care."

"Yao. Man must die."

"Yao. Let him; there is still the Man."

The bark roof of the porch was supported by peeled
cypress poles, high above the texas of the steamboat, shad-
ing an unfloored banquette where on the trodden earth
mules and horses were tethered in bad weather. On the
forward end of the steamboat's deck sat an old man and
two women. One of the women was dressing a fowl, the
other was shelling corn. The old man was talking. He was
barefoot, in a long linen frock coat and a beaver hat.

"This world is going to the dogs," he said. "It is being
ruined by white men. We got along fine for years and
years, before the white men foisted their Negroes upon
us. In the old days the old men sat in the shade and ate
stewed deer's flesh and corn and smoked tobacco and talked
of honor and grave affairs; now what do we do? Even the
old wear themselves into the grave taking care of them that
like sweating." When Basket and Berry crossed the deck

324 The Wilderness

he ceased and looked up at them. His eyes were querulous,
bleared; his face was myriad with tiny wrinkles. "He is fled
also," he said.

"Yes," Berry said, "he is gone."

"I knew it. I told them so. It will take three weeks, like
when Doom died. You watch and see."

"It was three days, not three weeks," Berry said.

"Were you there?"

"No," Berry said. "But I have heard."

"Well, I was there," the old man said. "For three whole
weeks, through the swamps and the briers — " They went
on and left him talking.

What had been the saloon of the steamboat was now a
shell, rotting slowly; the polished mahogany, the carving
glinting momentarily and fading through the mold in figures
cabalistic and profound; the gutted windows were like
cataracted eyes. It contained a few sacks of seed or grain,
and the fore part of the running gear of a barouche, to the
axle of which two C-springs rusted in graceful curves, sup-
porting nothing. In one corner a fox cub ran steadily and
soundlessly up and down a willow cage; three scrawny
gamecocks moved in the dust, and the place was pocked
and marked with their dried droppings.

They passed through the brick wall and entered a big
room of chinked logs. It contained the hinder part of the
barouche, and the dismantled body lying on its side, the
window slatted over with willow withes, through which
protruded the heads, the still, beady, outraged eyes and frayed
combs of still more game chickens. It was floored with
packed clay; in one corner leaned a crude plow and two
hand-hewn boat paddles. From the ceiling, suspended by
four deer thongs, hung the gilt bed which Issetibbeha had
fetched from Paris. It had neither mattress nor springs, the
frame crisscrossed now by a neat hammocking of thongs.

Red Leaves 325

Issetibbeha had tried to have his newest wife, the young
one, sleep in the bed. He was congenitally short of breath
himself, and he passed the nights half reclining in his splint
chair. He would see her to bed and, later, wakeful, sleeping
as he did but three or four hours a night, he would sit in the
darkness and simulate slumber and listen to her sneak
infinitesimally from the gilt and ribboned bed, to lie on a
quilt pallet on the floor until just before daylight. Then she
would enter the bed quietly again and in turn simulate
slumber, while in the darkness beside her Issetibbeha quietly
laughed and laughed.

The girandoles were lashed by thongs to two sticks
propped in a corner where a ten-gallon whisky keg lay also.
There was a clay hearth; facing it, in the splint chair, Moke-
tubbe sat. He was maybe an inch better than five feet tall,
and he weighed two hundred and fifty pounds. He wore a
broadcloth coat and no shirt, his round, smooth copper
balloon of belly swelling above the bottom piece of a suit
of linen underwear. On his feet were the slippers with the red
heels. Behind his chair stood a stripling with a punkah-like
fan made of fringed paper. Moketubbe sat motionless, with
his broad, yellow face with its closed eyes and flat nostrils,
his flipperlike arms extended. On his face was an expression
profound, tragic, and inert. He did not open his eyes when
Basket and Berry came in. •

"He has worn them since daylight?" Basket said.

"Since daylight," the stripling said. The fan did not cease.
"You can see."

"Yao," Basket said. "We can see." Moketubbe did not
move. He looked like an effigy, like a Malay god in frock
coat, drawers, naked chest, the trivial scarkt-heeled shoes.

"I wouldn't disturb him, if I were you," the stripling said.

"Not if I were you," Basket said. He and Berry squatted.
The stripling moved the fan steadily. "O Man," Basket said,

326 The Wilderness

"listen." Moketubbe did not move. "He is gone," Basket
said.

"I told you so," the stripling said. "I knew he would flee.
I told you."

"Yao," Basket said. "You are not the first to tell us after-
ward what we should have known before. Why is it that
some of you wise men took no steps yesterday to prevent
this?"

"He does not wish to die," Berry said.

"Why should he not wish it?" Basket said.

"Because he must die some day is no reason," the stripling
said. "That would not convince me either, old man."

"Hold your tongue," Berry said.

"For twenty years," Basket said, "while others of his race
sweat in the fields, he served the Man in the shade. Why
should he not wish to die, since he did not wish to sweat?"

"And it will be quick," Berry said. "It will not take long.s

"Catch him and tell him that," the stripling said.

"Hush," Berry said. They squatted, watching Moketubbe's
face. He might have been dead himself. It was as though
he were cased so in flesh that even breathing took place too
deep within him to show.

"Listen, O Man," Basket said. "Issetibbeha is dead. He
waits. His dog and his horse we have. But his slave has fled.
The one who held the pot for him, who ate of his food,
from his dish, is fled. Issetibbeha waits."

"Yao," Berry said.

"This is not the first time," Basket said. "This happened
when Doom, thy grandfather, lay waiting at the door of the
earth. He lay waiting three days, saying, 'Where is my
Negro?' And Issetibbeha, thy father, answered, 'I will find
him. Rest; I will bring him to you so that you may begin
the journey/ "

"Yao," Berry said.

Red Leaves 327

Moketubbe had not moved, had not opened his eyes.

"For three days Issetibbeha hunted in the bottom," Basket
said. "He did not even return home for food, until the
Negro was with him; then he said to Doom, his father,
'Here is thy dog, thy horse, thy Negro; rest.' Issetibbeha,
who is dead since yesterday, said it. And now Issetibbeha's
Negro is fled. His horse and his dog wait with him, but his
Negro is fled."

"Yao," Berry said.

Moketubbe had not moved. His eyes were closed; upon
his supine monstrous shape there was a colossal inertia,
something profoundly immobile, beyond and impervious to
flesh. They watched his face, squatting.

"When thy father was newly the Man, this happened,"
Basket said. "And it was Issetibbeha who brought back the
slave to where his father waited to enter the earth." Moke-
tubbe's face had not moved, his eyes had not moved. After
a while Basket said, "Remove the shoes."

The stripling removed the shoes. Moketubbe began to
pant, his bare chest moving deep, as though he were rising
from beyond his unfathomed flesh back into life, like up
from the water, the sea. But his eyes had not opened yet.

Berry said, "He will lead the hunt."

"Yao," Basket said. "He is the Man. He will lead the hunt."

IV

ALL THAT DAY the Negro, Issetibbeha's body servant, hidden
in the barn, watched Issetibbeha's dying. He was forty, a
Guinea man. He had a flat nose, a close, small head; the
inside corners of his eyes showed red a little, and his prom-
inent gums were a pale bluish red above his square, broad
teeth. He had been taken at fourteen by a trader off Kam-

328 The Wilderness

erun, before his teeth had been filed. He had been Issetib-
beha's body servant for twenty-three years.

On the day before, the day on which Issetibbeha lay sick,
he returned to the quarters at dusk. In that unhurried hour
the smoke of the cooking fires blew slowly across the street
from door to door, carrying into the opposite one the smell
of the identical meat and bread. The women tended them;
the men were gathered at the head of the lane, watching him
as he came down the slope from the house, putting his naked
feet down carefully in a strange dusk. To the waiting men
his eyeballs were a little luminous.

"Issetibbeha is not dead yet," the headman said.

"Not dead," the body servant said. "Who not dead?"

In the dusk they had faces like his, the different ages, the
thoughts sealed inscrutable behind faces like the death masks
of apes. The smell of the fires, the cooking, blew sharp and
slow across the strange dusk, as from another world, above
the lane and the pickaninnies naked in the dust.

"If he lives past sundown, he will live until daybreak,"
one said.

"Who says?"

"Talk says."

"Yao. Talk says. We know but one thing." They looked
at the body servant as he stood among them, his eyeballs
a little luminous. He was breathing slow and deep. His chest
was bare; he was sweating a little. "He knows. He knows it."

"Let us let the drums talk."

"Yao. Let the drums tell it."

The drums began after dark. They kept them hidden in
the creek bottom. They were made of hollowed cypress
knees, and the Negroes kept them hidden; why, none knew.
They were buried in the mud on the bank of a slough; a
lad of fourteen guarded them. He was undersized, and a
mute; he squatted in the mud there all day, clouded over

Red Leaves 329

with mosquitoes, naked save for the mud with which he
coated himself against the mosquitoes, and about his neck a
fiber bag containing a pig's rib to which black shreds of
flesh still adhered, and two scaly barks on a wire. He slob-
bered onto his clutched knees, drooling; now and then
Indians came noiselessly out of the bushes behind him and
stood there and contemplated him for a while and went
away, and he never knew it.

From the loft of the stable where he lay hidden until
dark and after, the Negro could hear the drums. They were
three miles away, but he could hear them as though they
were in the barn itself below him, thudding and thudding.
It was as though he could see the fire too, and the black
limbs turning into and out of the flames in copper gleams.
Only there would be no fire. There would be no more light
there than where he lay in the dusty loft, with the whisper-
ing arpeggios of rat feet along the warm and immemorial
ax-squared rafters. The only fire there would be the smudge
against mosquitoes where the women with nursing children
crouched, their heavy sluggish breasts nippled full and
smooth into the mouths of men children; contemplative,
oblivious of the drumming, since a fire would signify life.

There was a fire in the steamboat, where Issetibbeha lay
dying among his wives, beneath the lashed girandoles and the
suspended bed. He could see the smoke, and just before sun-
set he saw the doctor come out, in a waistcoat made of
skunk skins, and set fire to two clay-daubed sticks at the
bows of the boat deck. "So he is not dead yet," the Negro
said into the whispering gloom of the loft, answering him-
self; he could hear the two voices, himself and himself:

"Who not dead?"

"You are dead."

"Yao, I am dead," he said quietly. He wished to be where
the drums were. He imagined himself springing out of the

330 The Wilderness

bushes, leaping among the drums on his bare, lean, greasy,
invisible limbs. But he could not do that, because man leaped
past life, into where death was; he dashed into death and did
not die, because when death took a man, it took him just this
side of the end of living. It was when death overran him
from behind, still in life. The thin whisper of rat feet died
in fainting gusts along the rafters. Once he had eaten rat.
He was a boy then, but just come to America. They had
lived ninety days in a three-foot-high 'tween-deck in tropic
latitudes, hearing from topside the drunken New England
captain intoning aloud from a book which he did not recog-
nize for ten years afterward to be the Bible. Squatting in the
stable so, he had watched the rat, civilized, by association
with man reft of its inherent cunning of limb and eye; he
had caught it without difficulty, with scarce a movement
of his hand, and he ate it slowly, wondering how any of the
rats had escaped so long. At that time he was still wearing
the single white garment which the trader, a deacon in the
Unitarian church, had given him, and he spoke then only his
native tongue.

He was naked now, save for a pair of dungaree pants
bought by Indians from white men, and an amulet slung on
a thong about his hips. The amulet consisted of one half of
a mother-of-pearl lorgnon which Issetibbeha had brought
back from Paris, and the skull of a cottonmouth moccasin.
He had killed the snake himself and eaten it, save the poison
head. He lay in the loft, watching the house, the steamboat,
listening to the drums, thinking of himself among the drums.

He lay there all night. The next morning he saw the doctor
come out, in his skunk vest, and get on his mule and ride
away, and he became quite still and watched the final dust
from beneath the mule's delicate feet die away, and then he
found that he was still breathing and it seemed strange to
him that he still breathed air, still needed air. Then he lay

Red Leaves 331

and watched quietly, waiting to move, his eyeballs a little
luminous, but with a quiet light, and his breathing light and
regular, and saw Louis Berry come out and look at the sky.
It was good light then, and already five Indians squatted in
their Sunday clothes along the steamboat deck; by noon
there were twenty-five there. That afternoon they dug the
trench in which the meat would be baked, and the yams;
by that time there were almost a hundred guests — decorous,
quiet, patient in their stiff European finery — and he watched
Berry lead Issetibbeha's mare from the stable and tie her to
a tree, and then he watched Berry emerge from the house
with the old hound which lay beside Issetibbeha's chair. He
tied the hound to the tree too, and it sat there, looking
gravely about at the faces. Then it began to howl. It was still
howling at sundown, when the Negro climbed down the
back wall of the barn and entered the spring branch, where
it was already dusk. He began to run then. He could hear
the hound howling behind him, and near the spring, already
running, he passed another Negro. The two men, the one
motionless and the other running, looked for an instant at
each other as though across an actual boundary between twc
different worlds. He ran on into full darkness, mouth closed,
fists doubled, his broad nostrils bellowing steadily.

He ran on in the darkness. He knew the country well,
because he had hunted it often with Issetibbeha, following on
his mule the course of the fox or the cat beside Issetibbeha's
mare; he knew it as well as did the men who would pursue
him. He saw them for the first time shortly before sunset of
the second day. He had run thirty miles then, up the creek
bottom, before doubling back; lying in a pawpaw thicket
he saw the pursuit for the first time. There were two of
them, in shirts and straw hats, carrying their neatly rolled
trousers under their arms, and they had no weapons. They
were middle-aged, paunchy, and they could not have moved

332 The Wilderness

very fast anyway; it would be twelve hours before they
could return to where he lay watching them. "So I will have
until midnight to rest," he said. He was near enough to the
plantation to smell the cooking fires, and he thought how
he ought to be hungry, since he had not eaten in thirty
hours. "But it is more important to rest," he told himself.
He continued to tell himself that, lying in the pawpaw
thicket, because the effort of resting, the need and the haste
to rest, made his heart thud the same as the running had
done. It was as though he had forgot how to rest, as though
the six hours were not long enough to do it in, to remember
again how to do it.

As soon as dark came he moved again. lie had thought
to keep going steadily and quietly through the night, since
there was nowhere for him to go, but as soon as he moved
he began to run at top speed, breasting his panting chest, his
broad-flaring nostrils through the choked and whipping dark-
ness. He ran for an hour, lost by then, without direction,
when suddenly he stopped, and after a time his thudding
heart unraveled from the sound of the drums. By the sound
they were not two miles away; he followed the sound until
he could smell the smudge fire and taste the acrid smoke.
When he stood among them the drums did not cease; only
the headman came to him where he stood in the drifting
smudge, panting, his nostrils flaring and pulsing, the hushed
glare of his ceaseless eyeballs in his mud-daubed face as
though they were worked from lungs.

"We have expected thee," the headman said. "Go, now."

"Go?"

"Eat, and go. The dead may not consort with the living;
thou knowest that."

"Yao. I know that." They did not look at one another.
The drums had not ceased.

"Wilt thou eat?" the headman said.

Red Leaves 333

"I am not hungry. I caught a rabbit this afternoon, and
ate while I lay hidden/'

"Take some cooked meat with thee, then."

He accepted the cooked meat, wrapped in leaves, and
entered the creek bottom again; after a while the sound of
the drums ceased. He walked steadily until daybreak. "I
have twelve hours," he said. "Maybe more, since the trail
was followed by night." He squatted and ate the meat and
wiped his hands on his thighs. Then he rose and removed
the dungaree pants and squatted again beside a slough and
coated himself with mud — face, arms, body and legs — and
squatted again, clasping his knees, his head bowed. When it
was light enough to see, he moved back into the swamp and
squatted again and went to sleep so. He did not dream at all.
It was well that he moved, for, waking suddenly in broad
daylight and the high sun, he saw the two Indians. They
still carried their neatly rolled trousers; they stood opposite
the place where he lay hidden, paunchy, thick, soft-looking,
a little ludicrous in their straw hats and shirt tails.

"This is wearying work," one said.

"I'd rather be at home in the shade myself," the other said.
"But there is the Man waiting at the door to the earth."

"Yao." They looked quietly about; stooping, one of them
removed from his shirt tail a clot of cockleburs. "Damn that
Negro," he said.

"Yao. When have they ever been anything but a trial and
a care to us?"

In the early afternoon, from the top of a tree, the Negro
looked down into the plantation. He could see Issetibbeha's
body in a hammock between the two trees where the horse
and the dog were tethered, and the concourse about the
steamboat was filled with wagons and horses and mules,
with carts and saddle-horses, while in bright clumps the
women and the smaller children and the old men squatted

334 The Wilderness

about the long trench where the smoke from the barbecuing
meat blew slow and thick. The men and the big boys would
all be down there in the creek bottom behind him, on the
trail, their Sunday clothes rolled carefully up and wedged
into tree crotches. There was a clump of men near the door
to the house, to the saloon of the steamboat, though, and he
watched them, and after a while he saw them bring Moke-
tubbe out in a litter made of buckskin and persimmon poles;
high hidden in his leafed nook the Negro, the quarry, looked
quietly down upon his irrevocable doom with an expression
as profound as Moketubbe's own. "Yao," he said quietly.
"He will go then. That man whose body has been dead for
fifteen years, he will go also."

In the middle of the afternoon he came face to face with
an Indian. They were both on a footlog across a slough —
the Negro gaunt, lean, hard, tireless and desperate; the
Indian thick, soft-looking, the apparent embodiment of the
ultimate and the supreme reluctance and inertia. The Indian
made no move, no sound; he stood on the log and watched
the Negro plunge into the slough and swim ashore and crash
away into the undergrowth.

Just before sunset he lay behind a down log. Up the log
in slow procession moved a line of ants. He caught them and
ate them slowly, with a kind of detachment, like that of a
dinner guest eating salted nuts from a dish. They too had a
salt taste, engendering a salivary reaction out of all propor-
tion. He ate them slowly, watching the unbroken line move
up the log and into oblivious doom with a steady and terrific
undeviation. He had eaten nothing else all day; in his caked
mud mask his eyes rolled in reddened rims. At sunset, creep-
ing along the creek bank toward where he had spotted a
frog, a cottonmouth moccasin slashed him suddenly across
the forearm with a thick, sluggish blow. It struck clumsily,
leaving two long slashes across his arm like two razor slashes,

Red Leaves 335

and half sprawled with its own momentum and rage, it ap-
peared for the moment utterly helpless with its own awk-
wardness and choleric anger. "Ole, grandfather," the Negro
said. He touched its head and watched it slash him again
across his arm, and again, with thick, raking, awkward
blows. "It's that I do not wish to die," he said. Then he said
it again — "It's that I do not wish to die" — in a quiet tone,
of slow and low amaze, as though it were something that,
until the words had said themselves, he found that he had not
known, or had not known the depth and extent of his desire.

V

MOKETUBBE TOOK the slippers with him. He could not wear
them very long while in motion, not even in the litter where
he was slung reclining, so they rested upon a square of
fawnskin upon his lap — the cracked, frail slippers a little
shapeless now, with their scaled patent-leather surfaces and
buckleless tongues and scarlet heels, lying upon the supine
obese shape just barely alive, carried through swamp and
brier by swinging relays of men who bore steadily all day
long the crime and its object, on the business of the slain.
To Moketubbe it must have been as though, himself immor-
tal, he were being carried rapidly through hell by doomed
spirits which, alive, had contemplated his disaster, and, dead,
were oblivious partners to his damnation.

After resting for a while, the litter propped in the center
of the squatting circle and Moketubbe motionless in it, with
closed eyes and his face at once peaceful for the instant and
filled with inescapable foreknowledge, he could wear the
slippers for a while. The stripling put them on him, forcing
his big, tender, dropsical feet into them; whereupon into his
face came again that expression tragic, passive and pro-
foundly attentive, which dyspeptics wear. Then they went

336 The Wilderness

on. He made no move, no sound, inert in the rhythmic litter
out of some reserve of inertia, or maybe of some kingly
virtue such as courage or fortitude. After a time they set the
litter down and looked at him, at the yellow face like that
of an idol, beaded over with sweat. Then Three Basket or
Had-Two-Fathers would say: "Take them off. Honor has
been served/' They would remove the shoes. Moketubbe's
face would not alter, but only then would his breathing be-
come perceptible, going in and out of his pale lips with a
faint ah-ah-ah sound, and they would squat again while the
couriers and the runners came up.

"Not yet?"

"Not yet. He is going east. By sunset he will reach Mouth
of Tippah. Then he will turn back. We may take him

tomorrow."

"Let us hope so. It will not be too soon."
"Yao. It has been three days now."
"When Doom died, it took only three days."
"But that was an old man. This one is young."
"Yao. A good race. If he is taken tomorrow, I will win a
horse."

"May you win it."
"Yao. This work is not pleasant."

That was the day on which the food gave out at the plan-
tation. The guests returned home and came back the next
day with more food, enough for a week longer. On that day
Issetibbeha began to smell; they could smell him for a long
way up and down the bottom when it got hot toward noon
and the wind blew. But they didn't capture the Negro on
that day, nor on the next. It was about dusk on the sixth
day when the couriers came up to the litter; they had found
blood. "He has injured himself."

"Not bad, I hope," Basket said. "We cannot send with
Issetibbeha one who will be of no service to him."

Red Leaves 337

"Nor whom Issetibbeha himself will have to nurse and
care for/' Berry said.

"We do not know," the courier said. "He has hidden him-
self. He has crept back into the swamp. We have left
pickets."

They trotted with the litter now. The place where the
Negro had crept into the swamp was an hour away. In the
hurry and excitement they had forgotten that Moketubbe
still wore the slippeis; when they reached the place Moke-
tubbe had fainted. They removed the slippers and brought
him to.

With dark, they formed a circle about the swamp. They
squatted, clouded over with gnats and mosquitoes; the eve-
ning star burned low and close down the west, and the
constellations began to wheel overhead. "We will give him
time," they said. "Tomorrow is just another name for today."

"Yao. Let him have time." Then they ceased, and gazed
as one into the darkness where the swamp lay. After a while
the noise ceased, and soon the courier came out of the
darkness.

"He tried to break out."

"But you turned him back?"

"He turned back. We feared for a moment, the three of
us. We could smell him creeping in the darkness, and we
could smell something else, which we did not know. That
was why we feared, until he told us. He said to slay him
there, since it would be dark and he would not have to see
the face when it came. But it was not that which we smelled;
he told us what it was. A snake had struck him. That was
two days ago. The arm swelled, and it smelled bad. But it
was not that which we smelled then, because the swelling
had gone down and his arm was no larger than that of a
child. He showed us. We felt the arm, all of us did; it was
no larger than that of a child. He said to give him a hatchet

338 The Wilderness

so he could chop the arm off. But tomorrow is today also."

"Yao. Tomorrow is today."

"We feared for a while. Then he went back into the
swamp."

"That is good."

"Yao. We feared. Shall I tell the Man?"

"I will see," Basket said. He went away. The courier
squatted, telling again about the Negro. Basket returned.
"The Man says that it is good. Return to your post."

The courier crept away. They squatted about the litter;
now and then they slept. Sometime after midnight the
Negro waked them. He began to shout and talk to himself,
his voice coming sharp and sudden out of the darkness,
then he fell silent. Dawn came; a white crane flapped slowly
across the jonquil sky. Basket was awake. "Let us go now,"
he said. "It is today."

Two Indians entered the swamp, their movements noisy.
Before they reached the Negro they stopped, because he
began to sing. They could see him, naked and mud-caked,
sitting on a log, singing. They squatted silently a short dis-
tance away, until he finished. He was chanting something
in his own language, his face lifted to the rising sun. His
voice was clear, full, with a quality wild and sad. "Let him
have time," the Indians said, squatting, patient, waiting. He
ceased and they approached. He looked back and up at
them through the cracked mud mask. His eyes were blood-
shot, his lips cracked upon his square short teeth. The mask
of mud appeared to be loose on his face, as if he might have
lost flesh since he put it there; he held his left arm close
to his breast. From the elbow down it was caked and shape-
less with black mud. They could smell him, a rank smell.
He watched them quietly until one touched him on the
arm. "Come," the Indian said. "You ran well. Do not be
ashamed."

Red Leaves 339

VI

As THEY NEARED the plantation in the tainted bright morn-
ing, the Negro's eyes began to roll a little, like those of a
horse. The smoke from the cooking pit blew low along the
earth and upon the squatting and waiting guests about the
yard and upon the steamboat deck, in their bright, stiff,
harsh finery; the women, the children, the old men. They
had sent couriers along the bottom, and another on ahead,
and Issetibbeha's body had already been removed to where
the grave waited, along with the horse and the dog, though
they could still smell him in death about the house where he
had lived in life. The guests were beginning to move toward
the grave when the bearers of Moketubbe's litter mounted
the slope.

The Negro was the tallest there, his high, close, mud-
caked head looming above them all. He was breathing hard,
as though the desperate effort of the six suspended and
desperate days had catapulted upon him at once; although
they walked slowly, his naked scarred chest rose and fell
above the close-clutched left arm. He looked this way and
that continuously, as if he were not seeing, as though sight
never quite caught up with the looking. His mouth was open
a little upon his big white teeth; he began to pant. The
already moving guests halted, pausing, looking back, some
with pieces of meat in their hands, as the Negro looked
about at their faces with his wild, restrained, unceasing eyes.

"Will you eat first?" Basket said. He had to say it twice.

"Yes," the Negro said. "That's it. I want to eat."

The throng had begun to press back toward the center;
the word passed to the outermost: "He will eat first."

They reached the steamboat. "Sit down," Basket said.
The Negro sat on the edge of the deck. He was still panting,
his chest rising and falling, his head ceaseless with its white

34° Tbe Wilderness

eyeballs, turning from side to side. It was as if the inability
to see came from within, from hopelessness, not from
absence of vision. They brought food and watched quietly
as he tried to eat it. He put the food into his mouth and
chewed it, but chewing, the half-masticated matter began
to emerge from the corners of his mouth and to drool down
his chin, onto his chest, and after a while he stopped chewing
and sat there, naked, covered with dried mud, the plate on
his knees, and his mouth filled with a mass of chewed food,
open, his eyes wide and unceasing, panting and panting.
They watched him, patient, implacable, waiting.

"Come," Basket said at last.

"It's water I want," the Negro said. "I want water."

The well was a little way down the slope toward the
quarters. The slope lay dappled with the shadows of noon,
of that peaceful hour when, Issetibbeha napping in his chair
and waiting for the noon meal and the long afternoon to
sleep in, the Negro, the body servant, would be free. He
would sit in the kitchen door then, talking with the women
who prepared the food. Beyond the kitchen the lane between
the quarters would be quiet, peaceful, with the women talk-
ing to one another across the lane and the smoke of the
dinner fires blowing upon the pickaninnies like ebony toys
in the dust.

"Come," Basket said.

The Negro walked among them, taller than any. The
guests were moving on toward where Issetibbeha and the
horse and the dog waited. The Negro walked with his high
ceaseless head, his panting chest. "Come," Basket said. "You
wanted water."

"Yes," the Negro said. "Y£s." He looked back at the
house, then down to the quarters, where today no fire
burned, no face showed in any door, no pickaninny in the
dust, panting. "It struck me here, raking me across this arm;
once, twice, three times. I said, 'Ole, Grandfather.' "

Red Leaves 341

"Come now," Basket said. The Negro was still going
through the motion of walking, his knee action high, his
head high, as though he were on a treadmill. His eyeballs
had a wild, restrained glare, like those of a horse. uYou
wanted water," Basket said. "Here it is."

There was a gourd in the well. They dipped it full and
gave it to the Negro, and they watched him try to drink.
His eyes had not ceased as he tilted the gourd slowly against
his caked face. They could watch his throat working and the
bright water cascading from either side of the gourd, down
his chin and breast. Then the water stopped. "Come," Basket
said.

"Wait," the Negro said. He dipped the gourd again and
tilted it against his face, beneath his ceaseless eyes. Again
they watched his throat working and the unswallowed water
sheathing broken and myriad down his chin, channeling his
caked chest. They waited, patient, grave, decorous, im-
placable; clansman and guest and kin. Then the water ceased,
though still the empty gourd tilted higher and higher, and
still his black throat aped the vain motion of his frustrated
swallowing. A piece of water-loosened mud carried away
from his chest and broke at his muddy feet, and in the empty
gourd they could hear his breath: ah-ah-ah.

"Come," Basket said, taking the gourd from the Negro
and hanging it back in the well.

A Justice

i

UNTIL GRANDFATHER DIED, we would go out to the farm
every Saturday afternoon. We would leave home right after
dinner in the surrey, I in front with Roskus, and Grand-
father and Caddy and Jason in the back. Grandfather and
Roskus would talk, with the horses going fast, because it was
the best team in the county. They would carry the surrey
fast along the levels and up some of the hills even. But this
was in north Mississippi, and on some of the hills Roskus
and I could smell Grandfather's cigar.

The farm was four miles away. There was a long, low
house in the grove, not painted but kept whole and sound by
a clever carpenter from the quarters named Sam Fathers,
and behind it the barns and smokehouses, and further still,
the quarters themselves, also kept whole and sound by Sam
Fathers. He did nothing else, and they said he was almost a
hundred years old. He lived with the Negroes and they —
the white people; the Negroes called him a blue-gum —
called him a Negro. But he wasn't a Negro. That's what I'm
going to tell about.

When we got there, Mr. Stokes, the manager, would send
a Negro boy with Caddy and Jason to the creek to fish,
because Caddy was a girl and Jason was too little, but I
wouldn't go with them. I would go to Sam Fathers' shop,

343

344 The Wilderness

where he would be making breast-yokes or wagon wheels,
and I would always bring him some tobacco. Then he would
stop working and he would fill his pipe — he made them him-
self, out of creek clay with a reed stem — and he would tell
me about the old days. He talked like a nigger — that is, he
said his words like niggers do, but he didn't say the same
words — and his hair was nigger hair. But his skin wasn't
quite the color of a light nigger and his nose and his mouth
and chin were not nigger nose and mouth and chin. And his
shape was not like the shape of a nigger when he gets old.
He was straight in the back, not tall, a little broad, and his
face was still all the time, like he might be somewhere else
all the while he was working or when people, even white
people, talked to him, or while he talked to me. It was just
the same all the time, like he might be away up on a roof
by himself, driving nails. Sometimes he would quit work
with something half-finished on the bench, and sit down and
smoke. And he wouldn't jump up and go back to work when
Mr. Stokes or even Grandfather came along.

So I would give him the tobacco and he would stop work
and sit down and fill his pipe and talk to me.

"These niggers," he said. uThey call me Uncle Blue-Gum.
And the white folks, they call me Sam Fathers."

* Isn't that your name?" I said.

"No. Not in the old days. I remember. I remember how I
never saw but one white man until I was a boy big as you
are; a whisky trader that came every summer to the Planta-
tion. It was the Man himself that named me. He didn't name
me Sam Fathers, though."

"The Man?" I said.

"He owned the Plantation, the Negroes, my mammy too,
He owned all the land that I knew of until I was grown. He
was a Choctaw chief. He sold my mammy to your great-
grandpappy. He said I didn't have to go unless I wanted to,

A Justice 345

because I was a warrior too then. He was the one who
named me Had-Two-Fathers."

"Had-Two-Fathers? " I said. "That's not a name. That's
not anything."

"It was my name once. Listen."

II

THIS is HOW Herman Basket told it when I was big enough
to hear talk. He said that when Doom came back from New
Orleans, he brought this woman with him. He brought six
black people, though Herman Basket said they already had
more black people in the Plantation than they could find use
for. Sometimes they would run the black men with dogs,
like you would a fox or a cat or a coon. And then Doom
brought six more when he came home from New Orleans.
He said he won them on the steamboat, and so he had to
take them. He got off the steamboat with the six black
people, Herman Basket said, and a big box in which some-
thing was alive, and the gold box of New Orleans salt about
the size of a gold watch. And Herman Basket told how
Doom took a puppy out of the box in which something was
alive, and how he made a bullet of bread and a pinch of the
salt in the gold box, and put the bullet into the puppy and
the puppy died.

That was the kind of a man that Doom was, Herman
Basket said. He told how, when Doom got off the steamboat
that night, he wore a coat with gold all over it, and he had
three gold watches, but Herman Basket said that even after
seven years, Doom's eyes had not changed. He said that
Doom's eyes were just the same as before he went away,
before his name was Doom, and he and Herman Basket and
my pappy were sleeping on the same pallet and talking at
night, as boys will.

346 The Wilderness

Doom's name was Ikkemotubbe then, and he was not born
to be the Man, because Doom's mother's brother was the
Man, and the Man had a son of his own, as well as a brother.
But even then, and Doom no bigger than you are, Herman
Basket said that sometimes the Man would look at Doom and
he would say: "O Sister's Son, your eye is a bad eye, like
the eye of a bad horse."

So the Man was not sorry when Doom got to be a young
man and said that he would go to New Orleans, Herman
Basket said. The Man was getting old then. He used to like
to play mumble-peg and to pitch horseshoes both, but now
he just liked mumble-peg. So he was not sorry when Doom
went away, though he didn't forget about Doom. Herman
Basket said that each summer when the whisky-trader came,
the Man would ask him about Doom. uHe calls himself
David Callicoat now," the Man would say. "But his name
is Ikkemotubbe. You haven't heard maybe of a David Calli-
coat getting drowned in the Big River, or killed in the white
man's fight at New Orleans?"

But Herman Basket said they didn't hear from Doom at all
until he had been gone seven years. Then one day Herman
Basket and my pappy got a written stick from Doom to meet
him at the Big River. Because the steamboat didn't come up
our river any more then. The steamboat was still in our river,
but it didn't go anywhere any more. Herman Basket told
how one day during the high water, about three years after
Doom went away, the steamboat came and crawled up on
a sand-bar and died.

That was how Doom got his second name, the one before
Doom. Herman Basket told how four times a year the steam-
boat would come up our river, and how the People would go
to the river and camp and wait to see the steamboat pass, and
he said that the white man who told the steamboat where to
swim was named David Callicoat. So when Doom told Her-

A Justice 347

man Basket and pappy that he was going to New Orleans,
he said, "And I'll tell you something else. From now on, my
name is not Ikkemotubbe. It's David Callicoat. And some
day I'm going to own a steamboat, too." That was the kind
of man that Doom was, Herman Basket said.

So after seven years he sent them the written stick and
Herman Basket and pappy took the wagon and went to meet
Doom at the Big River, and Doom got off the steamboat with
the six black people. "I won them on the steamboat," Doom
said. "You and Craw-ford (my pappy's name was Crawfish-
ford, but usually it was Craw-ford) can divide them."

"I don't want them," Herman Basket said that pappy said.

"Then Herman can have them all," Doom said.

"I don't want them either," Herman Basket said.

"All right," Doom said. Then Herman Basket said he
asked Doom if his name was still David Callicoat, but in-
stead of answering, Doom told one of the black people some-
thing in the white man's talk, and the black man lit a pine
knot. Then Herman Basket said they were watching Doom
take the puppy from the box and make the bullet of bread
and the New Orleans salt which Doom had in the little gold
box, when he said that pappy said:

"I believe you said that Herman and I were to divide these
black people."

Then Herman Basket said he saw that one of the black
people was a woman.

"You and Herman don't want them," Doom said.

"I wasn't thinking when I said that," pappy said. "I will
take the lot with the woman in it. Herman can have the
other three."

"I don't want them," Herman Basket said.

"You can have four, then," pappy said. "I will take the
woman and one other."

"I don't want them," Herman Basket said.

348 The Wilderness

"I will take only the woman," pappy said. "You can have
the other five."

"I don't want them," Herman Basket said.

"You don't want them, either/' Doom said to pappy. "You
said so yourself."

Then Herman Basket said that the puppy was dead. "You
didn't tell us your new name," he said to Doom.

"My name is Doom now," Doom said. "It was given me by
a French chief in New Orleans. In French talking, Doo-um;
in our talking, Doom."

"What does it mean?" Herman Basket said.

He said how Doom looked at him for a while. "It means
the Man," Doom said.

Herman Basket told how they thought about that. He said
they stood there in the dark, with the other puppies in the
box, the ones that Doom hadn't used, whimpering and scuf-
fing, and the light of the pine knot shining on the eyeballs of
the black people and on Doom's gold coat and on the puppy
that had died.

"You cannot be the Man," Herman Basket said. "You are
only on the sister's side. And the Man has a brother and a
son."

"That's right," Doom said. "But if I were the Man, I
would give Craw-ford those black people. I would give
Herman something, too. For every black man I gave Craw-
ford, I would give Herman a horse, if I were the Man."

"Craw-ford only wants this woman," Herman Basket said.

"I would give Herman six horses, anyway," Doom said.
"But maybe the Man has already given Herman a horse."

"No," Herman Basket said. "My ghost is still walking."

It took them three days to reach the Plantation. They
camped on the road at night. Herman Basket said that they
did not talk.

They reached the Plantation on the third day. He said

4 Justice 349

that the Man was not very glad to see Doom, even though
Doom brought a present of candy for the Man's son. Doom
had something for all his kinsfolk, even for the Man's
srother. The Man's brother lived by himself in a cabin by
the creek. His name was Sometimes- Wakeup. Sometimes
the People took him food. The rest of the time they didn't
see him. Herman Basket told how he and pappy went with
Doom to visit Sometimes-Wakeup in his cabin. It was at
light, and Doom told Herman Basket to close the door.
Then Doom took the puppy from pappy and set it on the
floor and made a bullet of bread and the New Orleans salt
for Sometimes-Wakeup to see how it worked. When they
[eft, Herman Basket said how Sometimes-Wakeup burned a
stick and covered his head with the blanket.

That was the first night that Doom was at home. On the
next day Herman Basket told how the Man began to act
strange at his food, and died before the doctor could get there
and burn sticks. When the Willow-Bearer went to fetch the
Man's son to be the Man, they found that he had acted
strange and then died too.

"Now Sometimes-Wakeup will have to be the Man,"
pappy said.

So the Willow-Bearer went to fetch Sometimes-Wakeup
to come and be the Man. The Willow-Bearer came back
soon. "Sometimes-Wakeup does not want to be the Man,"
the Willow-Bearer said. "He is sitting in his cabin with his
head in his blanket."

"Then Ikkemotubbe will have to be the Man," pappy
said.

So Doom was the Man. But Herman Basket said that
pappy's ghost would not be easy. Herman Basket said he
told pappy to give Doom a little time. "I am still walking,"
Herman Basket said.

"But this is a serious matter with me," pappy said.

350 The Wilderness

He said that at last pappy went to Doom, before the Man
and his son had entered the earth, before the eating and
the horse-racing were over. "What woman?" Doom said.

"You said that when you were the Man," pappy said.
Herman Basket said that Doom looked at pappy but that
pappy was not looking at Doom.

"I think you don't trust me," Doom said. Herman Basket
said how pappy did not look at Doom. "I think you still
believe that that puppy was sick," Doom said. "Think
about it."

Herman Basket said that pappy thought.

"What do you think now?" Doom said.

But Herman Basket said that pappy still did not look at
Doom. "I think it was a well dog," pappy said.

Ill

AT LAST the eating and the horse-racing were over and the
Man and his son had entered the earth. Then Doom said,
"Tomorrow we will go and fetch the steamboat." Herman
Basket told how Doom had been talking about the steam-
boat ever since he became the Man, and about how the
House was not big enough. So that evening Doom said, "To-
morrow we will go and fetch the steamboat that died in the

river."

Herman Basket said how the steamboat was twelve miles
away, and that it could not even swim in the water. So the
next morning there was no one in the Plantation except
Doom and the black people. He told how it took Doom all
that day to find the People. Doom used the dogs, and he
found some of the People in hollow logs in the creek bottom.
That night he made all the men sleep in the House. He
kept the dogs in the House, too.

Herman Basket told how he heard Doom and pappy talk-
ing in the dark. "I don't think you trust me," Doom said.

A Justice 351

"I trust you," pappy said.

"That is what I would advise," Doom said.

"I wish you could advise that to my ghost," pappy said.

The next morning they went to the steamboat. The
women and the black people walked. The men rode in the
wagons, with Doom following behind with the dogs.

The steamboat was lying on its side on the sand-bar. When
they came to it, there were three white men on it. "Now
we can go back home," pappy said.

But Doom talked to the white men. "Does this steamboat
belong to you?" Doom said.

"It does not belong to you," the white men said. And
though they had guns, Herman Basket said they did not
look like men who would own a boat.

"Shall we kill them?" he said to Doom. But he said that
Doom was still talking to the men on the steamboat.

"What will vou take for it?" Doom said.

j

"What will you give for it?" the white men said.

"It is dead," Doom said. "It's not worth much."

"Will you give ten black people?" the white men said.

"All right," Doom said. "Let the black people who came
with me from the Big River come forward." They came
forward, the five men and the woman. "Let four more
black people come forward." Four more came forward.
"You are now to eat of the corn of those white men yonder,"
Doom said. "May it nourish you." The white men went
away, the ten black people following them. "Now," Doom
said, "let us make the steamboat get up and walk."

Herman Basket said that he and pappy did not go into the
river with the others, because pappy said to go aside and
talk. They went aside. Pappy talked, but Herman Basket
said that he said he did not think it was right to kill white
men, but pappy said how they could fill the white men with
rocks and sink them in the river and nobody would find

352 The Wilderness

them. So Herman Basket said they overtook the three white
men and the ten black people, then they turned back toward
the boat. Just before they came to the steamboat, pappy
said to the black men: "Go on to the Man. Go and help
make the steamboat get up and walk. I will take this woman
on home."

"This woman is my wife," one of the black men said. "I
want her to stay with me."

"Do you want to be arranged in the river with rocks in
your inside too?" pappy said to the black man.

"Do you want to be arranged in the river yourself?" the
black man said to pappy. "There are two of you, and nine
of us."

Herman Basket said that pappy thought. Then pappy
said, "Let us go to the steamboat and help the Man."

They went to the steamboat. But Herman Basket said
that Doom did not notice the ten black people until it was
time to return to the Plantation. Herman Basket told how
Doom looked at the black people, then looked at pappy.
"It seems that the white men did not want these black
people," Doom said.

"So it seems," pappy said.

"The white men went away, did they?" Doom said.

"So it seems," pappy said.

Herman Basket told how every night Doom would make
all the men sleep in the House, with the dogs in the House
too, and how each morning they would return to the steam-
boat in the wagons. The wagons would not hold everybody,
so after the second day the women stayed at home. But it
was three days before Doom noticed that pappy was staying
at home too. Herman Basket said that the woman's husband
may have told Doom. "Craw-ford hurt his back lifting the
steamboat/' Herman Basket said he told Doom. "He said

A Justice 353

he would stay at the Plantation and sit with his feet in the
Hot Spring so that the sickness in his back could return to
the earth."

"That is a good idea," Doom said. "He has been doing
this for three days, has he? Then the sickness should be down
in his legs by now."

When they returned to the Plantation that night, Doom
sent for pappy. He asked pappy if the sickness had moved.
Pappy said how the sickness moved very slow. "You must
sit in the Spring more," Doom said.

"That is what I think," pappy said.

"Suppose you sit in the Spring at night too," Doom said.

"The night air will make it worse," pappy said.

"Not with a fire there," Doom said. "I will send one of
the black people with you to keep the fire burning."

"Which one of the black people?" pappy said.

"The husband of the woman which I won on the steam-
boat," Doom said.

"I think my back is better," pappy said.

"Let us try it," Doom said.

"I know my back is better," pappy said.

"Let us try it, anyway," Doom said. Just before dark
Doom sent four of the People to fix pappy and the black
man at the Spring. Herman Basket said the People returned
quickly. He said that as they entered the House, pappy
entered also.

"The sickness began to move suddenly," pappy said. "It
has reached my feet since noon today."

"Do you think it will be gone by morning?" Doom said.

"I think so," pappy said.

"Perhaps you had better sit in the Spring tonight and
make sure," Doom said.

"I know it will be gone by morning," pappy said.

354 The Wilderness

IV

WHEN IT GOT to be summer, Herman Basket said that the
steamboat was out of the river bottom. It had taken them
five months to get it out of the bottom, because they had to
cut down the trees to make a path for it. But now he said
the steamboat could walk faster on the logs. He told how
pappy helped. Pappy had a certain place on one of the ropes
near the steamboat that nobody was allowed to take, Herman
Basket said. It was just under the front porch of the steam-
boat where Doom sat in his chair, with a boy with a branch
to shade him and another boy with a branch to drive away
the flying beasts. The dogs rode on the boat too.

In the summer, while the steamboat was still walking, Her-
man Basket told how the husband of the woman came to
Doom again. "I have done what I could for you," Doom
said. "Why don't you go to Craw-ford and adjust this matter
yourself?"

The black man said that he had done that. He said that
pappy said to adjust it by a cock-fight, pappy's cock against
the black man's, the winner to have the woman, the one
who refused to fight to lose by default. The black man said
he told pappy he did not have a cock, and that pappy said
that in that case the black man lost by default and that the
woman belonged to pappy. "And what am I to do?" the
black man said.

Doom thought. Then Herman Basket said that Doom
called to him and asked him which was pappy's best cock
and Herman Basket told Doom that pappy had only one.
"That black one?" Doom said. Herman Basket said he told
Doom that was the one. "Ah," Doom said. Herman Basket
told how Doom sat in his chair on the porch of the steam-
boat while it walked, looking down at the People and
the black men pulling the ropes, making the steamboat walk.

A Justice 355

"Go and tell Craw-ford you have a cock," Doom said to
the black man. "Just tell him you will have a cock in the
pit. Let it be tomorrow morning. We will let the steamboat
sit down and rest." The black man went away. Then Her-
man Basket said that Doom was looking at him, and that
he did not look at Doom. Because he said there was but
one better cock in the Plantation than pappy's, and that
one belonged to Doom. "I think that that puppy was not
sick," Doom said. "What do you think?"

Herman Basket said that he did not look at Doom. "That
is what I think," he said.

"That is what I would advise," Doom said.

Herman Basket told how the next day the steamboat sat
and rested. The pit was in the stable. The People and the
black people were there. Pappy had his cock in the pit. Then
the black man put his cock into the pit. Herman Basket said
that pappy looked at the black man's cock.

"This cock belongs to Ikkemotubbe," pappy said.

"It is his," the People told pappy. "Ikkemotubbe gave it
to him with all to witness."

Herman Basket said that pappy had already picked up his
cock. "This is not right," pappy said. "We ought not to let
him risk his wife on a cock-fight."

"Then you withdraw?" the black man said.

"Let me think," pappy said. He thought. The People
watched. The black man reminded pappy of what he had
said about defaulting. Pappy said he did not mean to say
that and that he withdrew it. The People told him that he
could only withdraw by forfeiting the match. Herman
Basket said that pappy thought again. The People watched.
"All right," pappy said. "But I am being taken advantage of."

The cocks fought. Pappy's cock fell. Pappy took it up
quickly. Herman Basket said it was like pappy had been wait-
ing for his cock to fall so he could pick it quickly up. "Wait,"

356 The Wilderness

he said. He looked at the People. "Now they have fought.
Isn't that true?" The People said that it was true. "So that
settles what I said about forfeiting."

Herman Basket said that pappy began to get out of the pit.

"Aren't you going to fight?" the black man said.

"I don't think this will settle anything," pappy said. "Do
you?"

Herman Basket told how the black man looked at pappy.
Then he quit looking at pappy. He was squatting. Herman
Basket said the People looked at the black man looking at:
the earth between his feet. They watched him take up a clod
of dirt, and then they watched the dust come out between
the black man's fingers. "Do you think that this will settle
anything?" pappy said.

"No," the black man said. Herman Basket said that the
People could not hear him very good. But he said that pappy
could hear him.

"Neither do I," pappy said. "It would not be right to risk
your wife on a cock-fight."

Herman Basket told how the black man looked up, with
the dry dust about the fingers of his hand. He said the black
man's eyes looked red in the dark pit, like the eyes of a fox.
"Will you let the cocks fight again?" the black man said.

"Do you agree that it doesn't settle anything?" pappy said.

"Yes," the black man said.

Pappy put his cock back into the ring. Herman Basket
said that pappy's cock was dead before it had time to act
strange, even. The black man's cock stood upon it and
started to crow, but the black man struck the live cock away
and he jumped up and down on the dead cock until it did
not look like a cock at all, Herman Basket said.

Then it was fall, and Herman Basket told how the steam-
boat came to the Plantation and stopped beside the House
and died again. He said that for two months they had been

A Justice 357

in sight of the Plantation, making the steamboat walk on the
logs, but now the steamboat was beside the House and the
House was big enough to please Doom. He gave an eating.
It lasted a week. When it was over, Herman Basket told how
the black man came to Doom a third time. Herman Basket
said that the black man's eyes were red again, like those of
a fox, and that they could hear his breathing in the room.
"Come to my cabin," he said to Doom. "I have something
to show you."

"I thought it was about that time," Doom said. He looked
about the room, but Herman Basket told Doom that pappy
had just stepped out. "Tell him to come also," Doom said.
When they came to the black man's cabin, Doom sent two
of the People to fetch pappy. Then they entered the cabin.
What the black man wanted to show Doom was a new man.

"Look," the black man said. "You are the Man. You are
to see justice done."

"What is wrong with this man?" Doom said.

"Look at the color of him," the black man said. He began
to look around the cabin. Herman Basket said that his eyes
went red and then brown and then red, like those of a fox.
He said they could hear the black man's breathing. "Do I
get justice?" the black man said. "You are the Man."

"You should be proud of a fine yellow man like this,"
Doom said. Fie looked at the new man. "I don't see that
justice can darken him any," Doom said. He looked about
the cabin also. "Come forward, Craw-ford," he said. "This
is a man, not a copper snake; he will not harm you." But
Herman Basket said that pappy would not come forward.
He said the black man's eyes went red and then brown and
then red when he breathed. "Yao," Doom said, "this is not
right. Any man is entitled to have his melon patch protected
from these wild bucks of the woods. But first let us name this
man." Doom thought. Herman Basket said the black man's

358 The Wilderness

eyes went quieter now, and his breath went quieter too. "We
will call him Had-Two-Fathers," Doom said.

V

SAM FATHERS lit his pipe again. He did it deliberately, rising
and lifting between thumb and forefinger from his forge a
coal of fire. Then he came back and sat down. It was getting
late. Caddy and Jason had come back from the creek, and I
could see Grandfather and Mr. Stokes talking beside the
carriage, and at that moment, as though he had felt my gaze,
Grandfather turned and called my name.

"What did your pappy do then?" I said.

"He and Herman Basket built the fence," Sam Fathers
said. "Herman Basket told how Doom made them set two
posts into the ground, with a sapling across the top of them.
The nigger and pappy wrere there. Doom had not told them
about the fence then. Flerman Basket said it was just like
when he and pappy and Doom were boys, sleeping on the
same pallet, and Doom would wake them at night and make
them get up and go hunting with him, or when he would
make them stand up with him and fight with their fists, just
for fun, until Herman Basket and pappy would hide from
Doom.

"They fixed the sapling across the two posts and Doom
said to the nigger: 'This is a fence. Can you climb it? '

"Flerman Basket said the nigger put his hand on the
sapling and sailed over it like a bird.

"Then Doom said to pappy: 'Climb this fence.'

" 'This fence is too high to climb/ pappy said.

" 'Climb this fence, and I will give you the woman,'
Doom said.

"Herman Basket said pappy looked at the fencv0. a while.
'Let me go under this fence.' he said.

A Justice 359

" 'No,' Doom said.

"Herman Basket told me how pappy began to sit down on
the ground. 'It's not that I don't trust you,' pappy said.

" 'We will build the fence this high,' Doom said.

" 'What fence?' Herman Basket said.

" 'The fence around the cabin of this black man,' Doom
said.

" 'I can't build a fence I couldn't climb,' pappy said.

" 'Herman will help you,' Doom said.

"Herman Basket said it was just like when Doom used to
wake them and make them go hunting. He said the dogs
found him and pappy about noon the next day, and that they
began the fence that afternoon. He told me how they had
to cut the saplings in the creek bottom and drag them in by
hand, because Doom would not let them use the wagon. So
sometimes one post would take them three or four days.
'Never mind,' Doom said. 'You have plenty of time. And
the exercise will make Craw-ford sleep at night.'

"He told me how they worked on the fence all that winter
and all the next summer, until after the whisky trader had
come and gone. Then it was finished. He said that on the
day they set the last post, the nigger came out of the cabin
and put his hand on the top of a post (it was a palisade fence,
the posts set upright in the ground) and flew out like a bird.
'This is a good fence,' the nigger said. 'Wait,' he said. 'I have
something to show you.' Herman Basket said he flew back
over the fence again and went into the cabin and came back.
Herman Basket said that he was carrying a new man and that
he held the new man up so they could see it above the fence.
'What do you think about this for color?' he said."

Grandfather called me again. This time I got up. The sun
was already down beyond the peach orchard. I was just
twelve then, and to me the story did not seem to have got
anywhere, to have had point or end. Yet I obeyed Grand-

360 The Wilderness

father's voice, not that I was tired of Sam Fathers' talking,
but with that immediacy of children with which they flee
temporarily something which they do not quite understand;
that, and the instinctive promptness with which we all obeyed
Grandfather, not from concern of impatience or reprimand,
but because we all believed that he did fine things, that his
waking life passed from one fine (if faintly grandiose) pic-
ture to another.

They were in the surrey, waiting for me. I got in; the
horses moved at once, impatient too for the stable. Caddy
had one fish, about the size of a chip, and she was wet to the
waist. We drove on, the team already trotting. When we
passed Mr. Stokes' kitchen we could smell ham cooking.
The smell followed us on to the gate. When we turned onto
the road home it was almost sundown. Then we couldn't
smell the cooking ham any more. "What were you and Sam
talking about?" Grandfather said.

We went on, in that strange, faintly sinister suspension of
twilight in which I believed that I could still see Sam Fathers
back there, sitting on his wooden block, definite, immobile,
and complete, like something looked upon after a long time
in a preservative bath in a museum. That was it. I was just
twelve then, and I would have to wait until I had passed on
and through and beyond the suspension of twilight. Then I
knew that I would know. But then Sam Fathers would be
dead.

"Nothing, sir," I said. "We were just talking."

A Courtship

THIS is HOW it was in the old days, when old Issetibbeha was
still the Man, and Ikkemotubbe, Issetibbeha's nephew, and
David Hogganbeck, the white man who told the steamboat
where to walk, courted Herman Basket's sister.

The People all lived in the Plantation now. Issetibbeha
and General Jackson met and burned sticks and signed a
paper, and now a line ran through the woods, although you
could not see it. It ran straight as a bee's flight among the
woods, with the Plantation on one side of it, where Issetib-
beha was the Man, and America on the other side, where
General Jackson was the Man. So now when something
happened on one side of the line, it was a bad fortune for
some and a good fortune for others, depending on what the
white man happened to possess, as it had always been. But
merely by occurring on the other side of that line which
you couldn't even see, it became what the white men called
a crime punishable by death if they could just have found
who did it. Which seemed foolish to us. There was one
uproar which lasted off and on for a week, not that the
white man had disappeared, because he had been the sort
of white man which even other white men did not regret,
but because of a delusion that he had been eaten. As if any
man, no matter how hungry, would risk eating the flesh of
a coward or thief in this country where even in \yjnter there

361

362 The Wilderness

is always something to be found to eat; — this land for which,
as Issetibbeha used to say after he had become so old that
nothing more was required of him except to sit in the sun
and criticise the degeneration of the People and the folly and
rapacity of politicians, the Great Spirit has done more and
man less than for any land he ever heard of. But it was a
free country, and if the white man wished to make a rule
even that foolish in their half of it, it was all right with us.

Then Ikkemotubbe and David Hogganbeck saw Herman
Basket's sister. As who did not, sooner or later, young men
and old men too, bachelors and \vidowcrs too, and some who
were not even widowers yet, who for more than one reason
within the hut had no business looking anywhere else,
though who is to say what age a man must reach or just
how unfortunate he must have been in his youthful com-
pliance, when he shall no longer look at the Herman Basket's
sisters of this world and chew his bitter thumbs too, aihee.
Because she walked in beauty. Or she sat in it, that is, be-
cause she did not walk at all unless she had to. One of the
earliest sounds in the Plantation would be the voice of
Herman Basket's aunt crying to know why she had not risen
and gone to the spring for water with the other girls, which
she did not do sometimes until Herman Basket himself rose
and made her, or in the afternoon crying to know why she
did not go to the river with the other girls and women to
wash, which she did not do very often either. But she did
not need to. Anyone who looks as Herman Basket's sister
did at seventeen and eighteen and nineteen does not need
to wash.

Then one day Ikkemotubbe saw her, who had known her
all his life except during the first two years. He was Issetib-
beha's sister's son. One night he got into the steamboat with
David Hogganbeck and went away. And suns passed and
then moons and then three high waters came and went and

A Courtship 363

old Issetibbeha had entered the earth a year and his son
Moketubbe was the Man when Ikkemotubbe returned,
named Doom now, with the white friend called the Chev-
alier Sceur-Blonde de Vitry and the eight new slaves which
we did not need either, and his gold-laced hat and cloak and
the little gold box of strong salt and the wicker wine hamper
containing the four other puppies which were still alive, and
within two days Moketubbe 's little son was dead and within
three Ikkemotubbe whose name was Doom now was him-
self the Man. But he was not Doom yet. He was still just
Ikkemotubbe, one of the young men, the best one, who rode
the hardest and fastest and danced the longest and got the
drunkest and was loved the best, by the young men and the
girls and the older women too who should have had other
things to think about. Then one day he saw Herman Basket's
sister, whom he had known all his life except for the first
two years.

After Ikkemotubbe looked at her, my father and Owl-by-
Night and Sylvester's John and the other young men looked
away. Because he was the best of them and they loved him
then while he was still just Ikkemotubbe. They would hold
the other horse for him as, stripped to the waist, his hair
and body oiled with bear's grease as when racing (though
with honey mixed into the bear's grease now) and with only
a rope hackamore and no saddle as when racing, Ikkemo-
tubbe would ride on his new racing pony past the gallery
where Herman Basket's sister sat shelling corn or peas into
the silver wine pitcher which her aunt had inherited from
her second cousin by marriage's great-aunt who was old
David Colbert's wife, while Log-in-the-Creek (one of the
young men too, though nobody paid any attention to him.
He raced no horses and fought no cocks and cast no dice,
and even when forced to, he would not even dance fast
enough to keep out of the other dancers' way, and disgraced

364 The Wilderness

both himself and the others each time by becoming sick after
only five or six horns of what was never even his whisky)
leaned against one of the gallery posts and blew into his
harmonica. Then one of the young men held the racing
pony, and on his gaited mare now and wearing his flower-
painted weskit and pigeon-tailed coat and beaver hat in
which he looked handsomer than a steamboat gambler and
richer even than the whisky-trader, Ikkemotubbe would ride
past the gallery where Herman Basket's sister shelled another
pod of peas into the pitcher and Log-in-the-Creek sat with
his back against the post and blew into the harmonica. Then
another of the young men would take the mare too and
Ikkemotubbe would walk to Herman Basket's and sit on the
gallery too in his fine clothes while Herman Basket's sister
shelled another pod of peas perhaps into the silver pitcher
and Log-in-the-Creek lay on his back on the floor, blowing
into the harmonica. Then the whisky-trader came and
Ikkemotubbe and the young men invited Log-in-the-Creek
into the woods until they became tired of carrying him. And
although a good deal wasted outside, as usual Log-in-the-
Creek became sick and then asleep after seven or eight horns,
and Ikkemotubbe returned to Herman Basket's gallery,
where for a day or two at least he didn't have to not listen
to the harmonica.

Finally Owl-at-Night made a suggestion. "Send Herman
Basket's aunt a gift." But the only thing Ikkemotubbe
owned which Herman Basket's aunt didn't, was the new
racing pony. So after a while Ikkemotubbe said, "So it seems
I want this girl even worse than I believed," and sent Owl-
at-Night to tie the racing pony's hackamore to Herman
Basket's kitchen door handle. Then he thought how Herman
Basket's aunt could not even always make Herman Basket's
sister just get up and go to the spring for water. Besides,
she was the second cousin by marriage to the grand-niece

A Courtship 365

of the wife of old David Colbert, the chief Man of all the
Chickasaws in our section, and she looked upon Issetibbeha's
whole family and line as mushrooms.

"But Herman Basket has been known to make her get up
and go to the spring," my father said. "And I never heard
him claim that old Dave Colbert's wife or his wife's niece
or anybody else's wife or niece or aunt was any better than
anybody else. Give Herman the horse."

"I can beat that," Ikkemotubbe said. Because there was no
horse in the Plantation or America either between Natchez
and Nashville whose tail Ikkemotubbe's new pony ever
looked at. "I will run Herman a horse-race for his influence,"
he said. "Run," he told my father. "Catch Owl-at-Night
before he reaches the house." So my father brought the
pony back in time. But just in case Herman Basket's aunt
had been watching from the kitchen window or something,
Ikkemotubbe sent Owl-at-Night and Sylvester's John home
for his crate of gamecocks, though he expected little from
this since Herman Basket's aunt already owned the best
cocks in the Plantation and won all the money every Sun-
day morning anyway. And then Herman Basket declined
to commit himself, so a horse-race would have been merely
for pleasure and money. And Ikkemotubbe said how money
could not help him, and with that damned girl on his mind
day and night his tongue had forgotten the savor of pleasure.
But the whisky-trader always came, and so for a day or two
at least he wouldn't have to not listen to the harmonica.

Then David Hogganbeck also looked at Herman Basket's
sister, whom he too had been seeing once each year since the
steamboat first walked to the Plantation. After a while even
winter would be over and we would begin to watch the
mark which David Hogganbeck had put on the landing to
show us when the water would be tall enough for the steam-
boat to walk in. Then the river would reach the mark, and

3 66 The Wilderness

sure enough within two suns the steamboat would cry in
the Plantation. Then all the People — men and women and
children and dogs, even Herman Basket's sister because
Ikkemotubbe would fetch a horse for her to ride and so
only Log-in-the-Creek would remain, not inside the house
even though it was still cold, because Herman Basket's aunt
wouldn't let him stay inside the house where she would
have to step over him each time she passed, but squatting in
his blanket on the gallery with an old cooking-pot of fire
inside the blanket with him — would stand on the landing,
to watch the upstairs and the smokestack moving among the
trees and hear the puffing of the smokestack and its feet
walking fast in the water too when it was not crying. Then
we would begin to hear David Hogganbeck's fiddle, and
then the steamboat would come walking up the last of the
river like a race-horse, with the smoke rolling black and its
feet flinging the water aside as a running horse flings dirt,
and Captain Studenmare who owned the steamboat chewing
tobacco in one window and David Hogganbeck playing his
fiddle in the other, and between them the head of the boy
slave who turned the wheel, who was not much more than
half as big as Captain Studenmare and not even a third as
big as David Hogganbeck. And all day long the trading
would continue, though David Hogganbeck took little part
in this. And all night long the dancing would continue, and
David Hogganbeck took the biggest part in this. Because he
was bigger than any two of the young men put together
almost, and although you would not have called him a man
built for dancing or running either, it was as if that very
double size which could hold twice as much whisky as any
other, could also dance twice as long, until one by one the
young men fell away and only he was left. And there was
horse-racing and eating, and although David Hogganbeck
had no horses and did not ride one since no horse could

A Courtship 367

have carried him and run fast too, he would eat a match
each year for money against any two of the young men
whom the People picked, and David Hogganbeck always
won. Then the water would return toward the mark he had
made on the landing, and it would be time for the steamboat
to leave while there was still enough water in the river for it
to walk in.

And then it did not go away. The river began to grow
little, yet still David Hogganbeck played his fiddle on
Herman Basket's gallery while Herman Basket's sister stirred
something for cooking into the silver wine pitcher and
Ikkemotubbe sat against a post in his fine clothes and his
beaver hat and Log-in-the-Creek lay on his back on the
floor with the harmonica cupped in both hands to his mouth,
though you couldn't hear now whether he was blowing into
it or not. Then you could see the mark which David Hog-
ganbeck had marked on the landing while he still played his
fiddle on Herman Basket's gallery where Ikkemotubbe had
brought a rocking chair from his house to sit in until David
Hogganbeck would have to leave in order to show the steam-
boat the way back to Natchez. And all that afternoon the
People stood along the landing and watched the steamboat's
slaves hurling wood into its stomach for steam to make it
walk; and during most of that night, while David Hoggan-
beck drank twice as much and danced twice as long as even
David Hogganbeck, so that he drank four times as much
and danced four times as long as even Ikkemotubbe, even
an Ikkemotubbe who at last had looked at Herman Basket's
sister or at least had looked at someone else looking at her,
the older ones among the People stood along the landing and
watched the slaves hurling wood into the steamboat's stom-
ach, not to make it walk but to make its voice cry while
Captain Studenmare leaned out of the upstairs with the end
of the crying-rope tied to the door-handle. And the next

368 The Wilderness

day Captain Studenmare himself came onto the gallery and
grasped the end of David Hogganbeck's fiddle.

"You're fired," he said.

"All right," David Hogganbeck said. Then Captain
Studenmare grasped the end of David Hogganbeck's fiddle.

"We will have to go back to Natchez where I can get
money to pay you off," he said.

"Leave the money at the saloon," David Hogganbeck
said. "I'll bring the boat back out next spring."

Then it was night. Then Herman Basket's aunt came out
and said that if they were going to stay there all night, at
least David Hogganbeck would have to stop playing his
fiddle so other people could sleep. Then she came out and
said for Herman Basket's sister to come in and go to bed.
Then Herman Basket came out and said, "Come on now,
fellows. Be reasonable." Then Herman Basket's aunt came
out and said that the next time she was going to bring Her-
man Basket's dead uncle's shotgun. So Ikkemotubbe and
David Hogganbeck left Log-in-the-Creek lying on the floor
and stepped down from the gallery. "Goodnight," David
Hogganbeck said.

"I'll walk home with you," Ikkemotubbe said. So they
walked across the Plantation to the steamboat. It was dark
and there was no fire in its stomach now because Captain
Studenmare was still asleep under Issetibbeha's back porch.
Then Ikkemotubbe said, "Goodnight."

"I'll walk home with you," David Hogganbeck said. So
they walked back across the Plantation to Ikkemotubbe's
house. But David Hogganbeck did not have time to say
goodnight now because Ikkemotubbe turned as soon as they
reached his house and started back toward the steamboat.
Then he began to run, because David Hogganbeck still did
not look like a man who could run fast. But he had not
looked like a man who could dance a long time either, so

A Courtship 369

when Ikkemotubbe reached the steamboat and turned and
ran again, he was only a little ahead of David Hogganbeck.
And when they reached Ikkemotubbe's house he was still
only a little ahead of David Hogganbeck when he stopped,
breathing fast but only a little fast, and held the door open
for David Hogganbeck to enter.

"My house is not very much house," he said. "But it is
yours." So they both slept in Ikkemotubbe's bed in his house
that night. And the next afternoon, although Herman Bas-
ket would still do no more than wish him success, Ikkemo-
tubbe sent my father and Sylvester's John with his saddle
mare for Herman Basket's aunt to ride on, and he and Her-
man Basket ran the horse-race. And he rode faster than any-
one had ever ridden in the Plantation. He won by lengths and
lengths and, with Herman Basket's aunt watching, he made
Herman Basket take all the money, as though Herman Bas-
ket had won, and that evening he sent Owl-at-Night to tie
the racing pony's hackamore to the door-handle of Herman
Basket's kitchen. But that night Herman Basket's aunt did
not even warn them. She came out the first time with Her-
man Basket's dead uncle's gun, and hardly a moment had
elapsed before Ikkemotubbe found out that she meant him
too. So he and David Hogganbeck left Log-in-tiie-Creek
lying on the gallery and they stopped for a moment at my
father's house on the first trip between Ikkemotubbe's house
and the steamboat, though when my father and Owl-at-
Night finally found Ikkemotubbe to tell him that Herman
Basket's aunt must have sent the racing pony far into the
woods and hidden it because they had not found it yet,
Ikkemotubbe and David Hogganbeck were both asleep in
David Hogganbeck's bed in the steamboat.

And the next morning the whisky-trader came, and that
afternoon Ikkemotubbe and the young men invited Log-in-
the-Creek into the woods and my father and Sylvester's

370 The Wilderness

John returned for the whisky-trader's buckboard and, with
my father and Sylvester's John driving the buckboard and
Log-in-the-Creek lying on his face on top of the little house
on the back of the buckboard where the whisky-kegs rode
and Ikkemotubbe standing on top of the little house, wear-
ing the used general's coat which General Jackson gave
Issetibbeha, with his arms folded and one foot advanced
onto Log-in-the-Creek 's back, they rode slow past the gal-
lery where David Hogganbeck played his fiddle while
Herman Basket's sister stirred something for cooking into
the silver wine pitcher. And when my father and Owl-at-
Night found Ikkemotubbe that night to tell him they still
had not found where Herman Basket's aunt had hidden the
pony, Ikkemotubbe and David Hogganbeck were at Ikke-
motubbe's house. And the next afternoon Ikkemotubbe and
the young men invited David Hogganbeck into the woods
and it was a long time this time and when they came out,
David Hogganbeck was driving the buckboard while the
legs of Ikkemotubbe and the other young men dangled from
the open door of the little whisky-house like so many strands
of vine hay and Issetibbeha's general's coat was tied by its
sleeves about the neck of one of the mules. And nobody
hunted for the racing pony that night, and when Ikkemo-
tubbe waked up, he didn't know at first even where he was.
And he could already hear David Hogganbeck's fiddle be-
fore he could move aside enough of the young men to get
out of the little whisky-house, because that night neither
Herman Basket's aunt nor Herman Basket and then finally
Herman Basket's dead uncle's gun could persuade David
Hogganbeck to leave the gallery and go away or even to
stop playing the fiddle.

So the next morning Ikkemotubbe and David Hoggan-
beck squatted in a quiet place in the woods while the young
men, except Sylvester's John and Owl-by-Night who were

A Courtship 371

still hunting for the horse, stood on guard. "We could fight
for her then," David Hogganbeck said.

"We could fight for her," Ikkemotubbe said. "But white
men and the People fight differently. We fight with knives,
to hurt good and to hurt quickly. That would be all right,
if I were to lose. Because I would wish to be hurt good.
But if I am to win, I do not wish you to be hurt good. If
I am to truly win, it will be necessary for you to be there
to see it. On the day of the wedding, I wish you to be
present, or at least present somewhere, not lying wrapped
in a blanket on a platform in the woods, waiting to enter the
earth." Then my father said how Ikkemotubbe put his hand
on David Hogganbeck's shoulder and smiled at him. "If that
could satisfy me, we would not be squatting here discussing
what to do. I think you see that."

"I think I do," David Hogganbeck said.

Then my father said how Ikkemotubbe removed his hand
from David Hogganbeck's shoulder. "And we have tried
whisky," he said.

"We have tried that," David Hogganbeck said.

"Even the racing pony and the general's coat failed me,"
Ikkemotubbe said. "I had been saving them, like a man with
two hole-cards."

"I wouldn't say that the coat completely failed," David
Hogganbeck said. "You looked fine in it."

"Aihee," Ikkemotubbe said. "So did the mule." Then my
father said how he was not smiling either as he squatted
beside David Hogganbeck, making little marks in the earth
with a twig. "So there is just one other thing," he said. "And
I am already beaten at that too before we start."

So all that day they ate nothing. And that night when
they left Log-in-the-Creek lying on Herman Basket's gal-
lery, instead of merely walking for a while and then running
for a while back and forth between Ikkemotubbe's house

372 The Wilderness

and the steamboat, they began to run as soon as they left
Herman Basket's. And when they lay down in the woods
to sleep, it was where they would not only be free of temp-
tation to eat but of opportunity too, and from which it
would take another hard run as an appetiser to reach the
Plantation for the match. Then it was morning and they ran
back to where my father and the young men waited on
horses to meet them and tell Ikkemotubbe that they still
hadn't found where under the sun Herman Basket's aunt
could have hidden the pony and to escort them back across
the Plantation to the race-course, where the People waited
around the table, with Ikkemotubbe's rocking chair from
Herman Basket's gallery for Issetibbeha and a bench behind
it for the judges. First there was a recess while a ten-year-old
boy ran once around the race-track, to let them recover
breath. Then Ikkemotubbe and David Hogganbeck took
their places on either side of the table, facing each other
across it, and Owl-at-Night gave the word.

First, each had that quantity of stewed bird chitterlings
which the other could scoop with two hands from the pot.
Then each had as many wild turkey eggs as he was old,
Ikkemotubbe twenty-two and David Hogganbeck twenty-
three, though Ikkemotubbe refused the advantage and said
he would eat twenty-three too. Then David Hogganbeck
said he was entitled to one more than Ikkemotubbe so he
would eat twenty-four, until Issetibbeha told them both to
hush and get on, and Owl-at-Night tallied the shells. Then
there was the tongue, paws and melt of a bear, though for
a little while Ikkemotubbe stood and looked at his half of
it while David Hogganbeck was already eating. And at the
half-way he stopped and looked at it again while David
Hogganbeck was finishing. But it was all right; there was a
faint smile on his face such as the young men had seen on
it at the end of a hard running when he was going from

A Courtship 373

now on not on the fact that he was still alive but on the
fact that he was Ikkemotubbe. And he went on, and Owl-
at-Night tallied the bones, and the women set the roasted
shote on the table and Ikkemotubbe and David Hogganbeck
moved back to the tail of the shote and faced one another
across it and Owl-at-Night had even given the word to start
until he gave another word to stop. "Give me some water,"
Ikkemotubbe said. So my father handed him the gourd and
he even took a swallow. But the water returned as though
it had merely struck the back of his throat and bounced,
and Ikkemotubbe put the gourd down and raised the tail of
his shirt before his bowed face and turned and walked away
as the People opened aside to let him pass.

And that afternoon they did not even go to the quiet place
in the woods. They stood in Ikkemotubbe's house while my
father and the others stood quietly too in the background.
My father said that Ikkemotubbe was not smiling now. "I
was right yesterday," he said. "If I am to lose to thee, we
should have used the knives. You see," he said, and now my
father said he even smiled again, as at the end of the long
hard running when the young men knew that he would go
on, not because he was still alive but because he was Ikkemo-
tubbe; " — you see, although I have lost, I still cannot recon-
cile."

"I had you beat before we started," David Hogganbeck
said. "We both knew that."

"Yes," Ikkemotubbe said. "But I suggested it."

"Then what do you suggest now?" David Hogganbeck
said. And now my father said how they loved David Hog-
ganbeck at that moment 'as they loved Ikkemotubbe; that
they loved them both at that moment while Ikkemotubbe
stood before David Hogganbeck with the smile on his face
and his right hand flat on David Hogganbeck's chest, be-
cause there were men in those days.

374 The Wilderness

"Once more then, and then no more," Ikkemotubbe said.
"The Cave." Then he and David Hogganbeck stripped and
my father and the others oiled them, body and hair too,
with bear's grease mixed with mint, not just for speed this
time but for lasting too, because the Cave was a hundred
and thirty miles away, over in the country of old David
Colbert — a black hole in the hill which the spoor of wild
creatures merely approached and then turned away and
which no dog could even be beaten to enter and where the
boys from among all the People would go to lie on their first
Night-away-from-Fire to prove if they had the courage to
become men, because it had been known among the People
from a long time ago that the sound of a whisper or even the
disturbed air of a sudden movement would bring parts of
the roof down and so all believed that not even a very big
movement or sound or maybe none at all at some time
would bring the whole mountain into the cave. Then Ikke-
motubbe took the two pistols from the trunk and drew the
loads and reloaded them. "Whoever reaches the Cave first
can enter it alone and fire his pistol," he said. "If he comes
back out, he has won."

"And if he does not come back out?" David Hogganbeck
said.

"Then you have won," Ikkemotubbe said.

"Or you," David Hogganbeck said.

And now my father said how Ikkemotubbe smiled again
at David Hogganbeck. "Or me," he said. "Though I think
I told you yesterday that such as that for me will not be
victory." Then Ikkemotubbe put another charge of powder,
with a wadding and bullet, into each of two small medicine
bags, one for himself and one for David Hogganbeck, just
in case the one who entered the Cave first should not lose
quick enough, and, wearing only their shirts and shoes and
each with his pistol and medicine bag looped on a cord

A Courtship 375

around his neck, thjey emerged from Ikkemotubbe's house
and began to run.

It was evening then. Then it was night, and since David
Hogganbeck did not know the way, Ikkemotubbe continued
to set the pace. But after a time it was daylight again and
now David Hogganbeck could run by the sun and the land-
marks which Ikkemotubbe described to him while they
rested beside a creek, if he wished to go faster. So some-
times David Hogganbeck would run in front and sometimes
Ikkemotubbe, then David Hogganbeck would pass Ikkemo-
tubbe as he sat beside a spring or a stream with his feet in
the water and Ikkemotubbe would smile at David Hoggan-
beck and wave his hand. Then he would overtake David
Hogganbeck and the country was open now and they would
run side by side in the prairies with his hand lying lightly
on David Hogganbeck's shoulder, not on the top of the
shoulder but lightly against the back of it until after a while
he would smile at David Hogganbeck and draw ahead. But
then it was sundown, and then it was dark again so Ikkemo-
tubbe slowed and then stopped until he heard David Hog-
ganbeck and knew that David Hogganbeck could hear him
and then he ran again so that David Hogganbeck could fol-
low the sound of his running. So when David Hogganbeck
fell, Ikkemotubbe heard it and went back and found David
Hogganbeck in the dark and turned him onto his back and
found water in the dark and soaked his shirt in it and re-
turned and wrung the water from the shirt into David Hog-
ganbeck's mouth. And then it was daylight and Ikkemotubbe
waked also and found a nest containing five unfledged birds
and ate and brought the other three to David Hogganbeck
and then he went on until he was just this side of where
David Hogganbeck could no longer see him and sat down
again until David Hogganbeck got up onto his feet,

And he gave David Hogganbeck the landmarks for that

376 The Wilderness

day too, talking back to David Hogganbeck over his shoul-
der as they ran, though David Hogganbeck did not need
them because he never overtook Ikkemotubbe again. He
never came closer than fifteen or twenty paces, although it
looked at one time like he was. Because this time it was
Ikkemotubbe who fell. And the country was open again so
Ikkemotubbe could lie there for a long time and watch
David Hogganbeck coming. Then it was sunset again, and
then it was dark again, and he lay there listening to David
Hogganbeck coming for a long time until it was time for
Ikkemotubbe to get up and he did and they went on slowly
in the dark with David Hogganbeck at least a hundred
paces behind him, until he heard David Hogganbeck fall
and then he lay down too. Then it was day again and he
watched David Hogganbeck get up onto his feet and come
slowly toward him and at last he tried to get up too but he
did not and it looked like David Hogganbeck was going to
come up with him. But he got up at last while David Hog-
ganbeck was still four or five paces away and they went on
until David Hogganbeck fell, and then Ikkemotubbe thought
he was just watching David Hogganbeck fall until he found
that he had fallen too but he got up onto his hands and knees
and crawled still another ten or fifteen paces before he too
lay down. And there in the sunset before him was the hill
in which the Cave was, and there through the night, and
there still in the sunrise.

So Ikkemotubbe ran into the Cave first, with his pistol
already cocked in his hand. He told how he stopped perhaps
for a second at the entrance, perhaps to look at the sun
again or perhaps just to see where David Hogganbeck had
stopped. But David Hogganbeck was running too and he
was still only that fifteen or twenty paces behind, and be-
sides, because of that damned sister of Herman Basket's,
there had been no light nor heat either in that sun for moon?

A Courtship 377

and moons. So he ran into the Cave and turned and saw
David Hogganbeck also running into the Cave and he cried,
"Back, fool!" But David Hogganbeck still ran into the Cave
even as Ikkemotubbe pointed his pistol at the roof and fired.
And there was a noise, and a rushing, and a blackness and a
dust, and Ikkemotubbe told how he thought, Aihec. It
comes. But it did not, and even before the blackness he saw
David Hogganbeck cast himself forward onto his hands and
knees, and there was not a complete blackness either because
he could see the sunlight and air and day beyond the tunnel
of David Hogganbeck's arms and legs as, still on his hands
and knees, David Hogganbeck held the fallen roof upon
his back. "Hurry," David Hogganbeck said. "Between my
legs. I can't — "

"Nay, brother," Ikkemotubbe said. "Quickly thyself,
before it crushes thee. Crawl back."

"Hurry," David Hogganbeck said behind his teeth.
"Hurry, damn you." And Ikkemotubbe did, and he remem-
bered David Hogganbeck's buttocks and legs pink in the
sunrise and the slab of rock which supported the fallen roof
pink in the sunrise too across David Hogganbeck's back.
But he did not remember where he found the pole nor how
he carried it alone into the Cave and thrust it into the hole
beside David Hogganbeck and stooped his own back under
it and lifted until he knew that some at least of the weight
of the fallen roof was on the pole.

"Now," he said. "Quickly."

"No," David Hogganbeck said.

"Quickly, brother," Ikkemotubbe said. "The weight is
off thee."

"Then I can't move," David Hogganbeck said. But Ikke-
motubbe couldn't move either, because now he had to hold
the fallen roof up with his back and legs. So he reached one
hand and grasped David Hogganbeck by the meat and

378 The Wilderness

jerked him backward out of the hole until he lay face-down
upon the earth. And maybe some of the weight of the fallen
roof was on the pole before, but now all of the weight was
on it and Ikkemotubbe said how he thought, This time surely
aihee. But it was the pole and not his back which snapped
and flung him face-down too across David Hogganbeck like
two flung sticks, and a bright gout of blood jumped out of
David Hogganbeck's mouth.

But by the second day David Hogganbeck had quit
vomiting blood, though Ikkemotubbe had run hardly forty
miles back toward the Plantation when my father met him
with the horse for David Hogganbeck to ride. Presently my
father said, "I have a news for thee."

"So you found the pony," Ikkemotubbe said. "All right.
Come on. Let's get that damned stupid fool of a white
man — "

"No, wait, my brother," my father said. "I have a news
for thee."

And presently Ikkemotubbe said, "All right."

But when Captain Studenmare borrowed Issetibbeha's
wagon to go back to Natchez in, he took the steamboat
slaves too. So my father and the young men built a fire in
the steamboat's stomach to make steam for it to walk, while
David Hogganbeck sat in the upstairs and drew the crying-
rope from time to time to see if the steam was strong enough
yet, and at each cry still more of the People came to the
landing until at last all the People in the Plantation except
old Issetibbeha perhaps stood along the bank to watch the
young men hurl wood into the steamboat's stomach: — a
thing never before seen in our Plantation at least. Then the
steam was strong and the steamboat began to walk and then
the People began to walk too beside the steamboat, watch-
ing the young men for a while then Ikkemotubbe and David
Hogganbeck for a while as the steamboat walked out of the
Plantation where hardly seven suns ago Ikkemotubbe and

A Courtship 379

David Hogganbeck would sit all day long and half the night
too until Herman Basket's aunt would come out with Her-
man Basket's dead uncle's gun, on the gallery of Herman
Basket's house while Log-in-the-Creek lay on the floor with
his harmonica cupped to his mouth and Log-in-the-Creek's
wife shelled corn or peas into old Dave Colbert's wife's
grand-niece's second cousin by marriage's wine pitcher.
Presently Ikkemotubbe was gone completely away, to be
gone a long time before he came back named Doom, with
his new white friend whom no man wished to love either
and the eight more slaves which we had no use for either
because at times someone would have to get up and walk
somewhere to find something for the ones we already owned
to do, and the fine gold- trimmed clothes and the little gold
box of salt which caused the other four puppies to become
dead too one after another, and then anything else which
happened to stand between Doom and what he wanted. But
he was not quite gone yet. He was just Ikkemotubbe yet,
one of the young men, another of the young men who loved
and was not loved in return and could hear the words and
see the fact, yet who, like the young men who had been
before him and the ones who would come after him, still
could not understand it.

"But not for her!" Ikkemotubbe said. "And not even
because it was Log-in-the-Creek. Perhaps they are for my-
self: that such a son as Log-in-the-Creek could cause them
to wish to flow."

"Don't think about her," David Hogganbeck said.

"I don't. I have already stopped. See?" Ikkemotubbe said
while the sunset ran down his face as if it had already been
rain instead of light when it entered the window. "There
was a wise man of ours who said once how a woman's fancy
is like a butterfly which, hovering from flower to flower,
pauses at the last as like as not where a horse has stood."

"There was a wise man of ours named Solomon who often

380 The Wilderness

said something of that nature too," David Hogganbeck said.
"Perhaps there is just one wisdom for all men, no matter
who speaks it."

"Aihee. At least, for all men one same heart-break.^
Ikkemotubbe said. Then he drew the crying-rope, because
the boat was now passing the house where Log-in-the-Creek
and his wife lived, and now the steamboat sounded like it
did the first night while Captain Studenmare still thought
David Hogganbeck would come and show it the way back
to Natchez, until David Hogganbeck made Ikkemotubbe
stop. Because they would need the steam because the steam-
boat did not always walk. Sometimes it crawled, and each
time its feet came up there was mud on them, and sometimes
it did not even crawl until David Hogganbeck drew the
crying-rope as the rider speaks to the recalcitrant horse to
remind it with his voice just who is up. Then it crawled
again and then it walked again, until at last the People could
no longer keep up, and it cried once more beyond the last
bend and then there was no longer either the black shapes
of the young men leaping to hurl wood into its red stomach
or even the sound of its voice in the Plantation or the night.
That's how it was in the old days.

Lof

THE PRESIDENT STOOD motionless at the door of the Dressing
Room, fully dressed save for his boots. It was half-past six in
the morning and it was snowing; already he had stood for an
hour at the window, watching the snow. Now he stood just
inside the door to the corridor, utterly motionless in his
stockings, stooped a little from his lean height as though lis-
tening, on his face an expression of humorless concern, since
humor had departed from his situation and his view of it
almost three weeks before. Hanging from his hand, low
against his flank, was a hand mirror of elegant French design,
such as should have been lying upon a lady's dressing table:
certainly at this hour of a February day.

At last he put his hand on the knob and opened the door
infinitesimally; beneath his hand the door crept by inches and
without any sound; still with that infinitesimal silence he put
his eye to the crack and saw, lying upon the deep, rich pile
of the corridor carpet, a bone. It was a cooked bone, a rib;
to it still adhered close shreds of flesh holding in mute and
overlapping halfmoons the marks of human teeth. Now that
the door was open he could hear the voices too. Still without
any sound, with that infinite care, he raised and advanced the
mirror. For an instant he caught his own reflection in it and
he paused for a time and with a kind of cold unbelief he
examined his own face — the face of the shrewd and coura-

382 The Wilderness

geous fighter, of that wellnigh infallible expert in the antici-
pation of and controlling of man and his doings, overlaid
now with the baffled helplessness of a child. Then he slanted
the glass a little further until he could see the corridor re-
flected in it. Squatting and facing one another across the
carpet as across a stream of water were two men. He did not
know the faces, though he knew the Face, since he had
looked upon it by day and dreamed upon it by night for
three weeks now. It was a squat face, dark, a little flat, a little
Mongol; secret, decorous, impenetrable, and grave. He had
seen it repeated until he had given up trying to count it or
even estimate it; even now, though he could see the two men
squatting before him and could hear the two quiet voices, it
seemed to him that in some idiotic moment out of attenuated
sleeplessness and strain he looked upon a single man facing
himself in a mirror.

They wore beaver hats and new frock coats; save for the
minor detail of collars and waistcoats they were impeccably
dressed — though a little early — for the forenoon of the time,
down to the waist. But from here down credulity, all sense
of fitness and decorum, was outraged. At a glance one would
have said that they had come intact out of Pickwickian Eng-
land, save that the tight, light-colored smallclothes ended not
in Hessian boots nor in any boots at all, but in dark, naked
feet. On the floor beside each one lay a neatly rolled bundle
of dark cloth; beside each bundle in turn, mute toe and toe
and heel and heel, as though occupied by invisible sentries
facing one another across the corridor, sat two pairs of new
boots. From a basket woven of whiteoak withes beside one
of the squatting men there shot suddenly the snake-like head
and neck of a game cock, which glared at the faint flash of
the mirror with a round, yellow, outraged eye. It was from
these that the voices came, pleasant, decorous, quiet:

"That rooster hasn't done you much good up here."

Lo! 383

"That's true. Still, who knows? Besides, I certainly couldn't
have left him at home, with those damned lazy Indians. I
wouldn't find a feather left. You know that. But it is a nui-
sance, having to lug this cage around with me day and night."

"This whole business is a nuisance, if you ask me."

"You said it. Squatting here outside this door all night long,
without a gun or anything. Suppose bad men tried to get in
during the night: what could we do? If anyone would want
to get in. I don't."

"Nobody does. It's for honor."

"Whose honor? Yours? Mine? Frank Weddel's?"

"White man's honor. You don't understand white people.
They are like children: you have to handle them careful be-
cause you never know what they are going to do next. So
if it's the rule for guests to squat all night long in the cold
outside this man's door, we'll just have to do it. Besides,
hadn't you rather be in here than out yonder in the snow in
one of those damn tents?"

"You said it. What a climate. What a country. I wouldn't
have this town if they gave it to me."

"Of course you wouldn't. But that's white men: no ac-
counting for taste. So as long as we are here, we'll have to try
to act like these people believe that Indians ought to act. Be-
cause you never know until afterward just what you have
done to insult or scare them. Like this having to talk white
talk all the time. . . ."

The President withdrew the mirror and closed the door
quietly. Once more he stood silent and motionless in the mid-
dle of the room, his head bent, musing, baffled yet indom-
itable: indomitable since this was not the first time that he
had faced odds; baffled since he faced not an enemy in the
open field, but was besieged within his very high and lonely
office by them to whom he was, by legal if not divine appoint-
ment, father. In the iron silence of the winter dawn he

384 The Wilderness

seemed, clairvoyant of walls, to be ubiquitous and one with
the waking of the stately House. Invisible and in a kind of
musing horror he seemed to be of each group of his Southern
guests — that one squatting without the door, that larger one
like so many figures carved of stone in the very rotunda it-
self of this concrete and visible apotheosis of the youthful
Nation's pride — in their new beavers and frock coats and
woolen drawers. With their neatly rolled pantaloons under
their arms and their virgin shoes in the other hand; dark,
timeless, decorous and serene beneath the astonished faces and
golden braid, the swords and ribbons and stars, of European
diplomats.

The President said quietly, "Damn. Damn. Damn." He
moved and crossed the room, pausing to take up his boots
from where they sat beside a chair, and approached the op-
posite door. Again he paused and opened this door too
quietly and carefully, out of the three weeks' habit of expect-
ant fatalism, though there was only his wife beyond it,
sleeping peacefully in bed. He crossed this room in turn, car-
rying his boots, pausing to replace the hand glass on the
dressing table, among its companion pieces of the set which
the new French Republic had presented to a predecessor,
and tiptoed on and into the anteroom, where a man in a long
cloak looked up and then rose, also in his stockings. They
looked at one another soberly. "All clear?" the President said
in a low tone.

"Yes, General."

"Good. Did you . . ." The other produced a second long,
plain cloak. "Good, good," the President said. He swung the
cloak about him before the other could move. "Now the . . ."
This time the other anticipated him; the President drew the
hat well down over his face. They left the room on tiptoe,
carrying their boots in their hands.

The back stairway was cold: their stockinged toes curled

Lo! 385

away from the treads, their vaporized breath wisped about
their heads. They descended quietly and sat on the bottom
step and put on their boots.

Outside it still snowed; invisible against snow-colored sky
and snow-colored earth, the flakes seemed to materialize with
violent and silent abruptness against the dark orifice of the
stables. Each bush and shrub resembled a white balloon
whose dark shroud lines descended, light and immobile, to
the white earth. Interspersed among these in turn and with a
certain regularity were a dozen vaguely tent-shaped mounds,
from the ridge of each of which a small column of smoke
rose into the windless snow, as if the snow itself were in a
state of peaceful combustion. The President looked at these,
once, grimly. "Get along," he said. The other, his head low-
ered and his cloak held closely about his face, scuttled on
and ducked into the stable. Perish the day when these two
words were applied to the soldier chief of a party and a na-
tion, yet the President was so close behind him that their
breaths made one cloud. And perish the day when the word
flight were so applied, yet they had hardly vanished into the
stable when they emerged, mounted now and already at a
canter, and so across the lawn and past the snow-hidden tents
and toward the gates which gave upon that Avenue in em-
bryo yet but which in time would be the stage upon which
each four years would parade the proud panoply of the
young Nation's lusty man's estate for the admiration and
envy and astonishment of the weary world. At the moment,
though, the gates were occupied by those more immediate
than splendid augurs of the future.

"Look out," the other man said, reining back. They reined
aside — the President drew the cloak about his face — and al-
lowed the party to enter: the squat, broad, dark men dark
against the snow, the beaver hats, the formal coats, the solid
legs clad from thigh to ankle in woolen drawers. Among

386 The Wilderness

them moved three horses on whose backs were lashed the
carcasses of six deer. They passed on, passing the two horse-
men without a glance.

"Damn, damn, damn," the President said; then aloud:
"You found good hunting."

One of the group glanced at him, briefly. He said cour-
teously, pleasantly, without inflection, going on: "So so."

The horses moved again. "I didn't see any guns," the other
man said.

"Yes," the President said grimly. "I must look into this,
too. I gave strict orders. . . ." He said fretfully, "Damn.
Damn. Do they carry their pantaloons when they go hunting
too, do you know?"

The Secretary was at breakfast, though he was not eating.
Surrounded by untasted dishes he sat, in his dressing gown
and unshaven; his expression too was harried as he perused
the paper which lay upon his empty plate. Before the fire
were two men — one a horseman with unmelted snow still
upon his cloak, seated on a wooden settle, the other standing,
obviously the secretary to the Secretary. The horseman rose
as the President and his companion entered. "Sit down, sit
down," the President said. He approached the table, slipping
off the cloak, which the secretary came forward and took.
"Give us some breakfast," the President said. "We don't dare
go home." He sat down; the Secretary served him in person.
"What is it now?" the President said.

"Do you ask?" the Secretary said. He took up the paper
again and glared at it. "From Pennsylvania, this time." He
struck the paper. "Maryland, New York, and now Pennsyl-
vania; apparently the only thing that can stop them is the
temperature of the water in the Potomac River." He spoke
in a harsh, irascible voice. "Complaint, complaint, complaint:
here is a farmer near Gettysburg. His Negro slave was in the

Lo! 387

barn, milking by lantern light after dark, when — the Negro
doubtless thought about two hundred, since the farmer esti-
mated them at ten or twelve — springing suddenly out of the
darkness in plug hats and carrying knives and naked from the
waist down. Result, item: One barn and loft of hay and cow
destroyed when the lantern was kicked over; item: one able-
bodied slave last seen departing from the scene at a high rate
of speed, headed for the forest, and doubtless now dead of
fear or by the agency of wild beasts. Debit the Government
of the United States: for barn and hay, one hundred dollars;
for cow, fifteen dollars; for Negro slave, two hundred dollars.
He demands it in gold."

"Is that so?" the President said, eating swiftly. "I suppose
the Negro and the cow took them to be ghosts of Hessian
.soldiers."

"I wonder if they thought the cow was a deer," the horse-
man said.

"Yes," the President said. "That's something else I
want. . . ."

"Who wouldn't take them for anything on earth or under
it?" the Secretary said. "The entire Atlantic seaboard north
of the Potomac River overrun by creatures in beaver hats
and frock coats and woolen drawers, frightening women and
children, setting fire to barns and running off slaves, killing
deer. . . ."

"Yes," the President said. "I want to say a word about that,
myself. I met a party of them returning as I came out. They
had six deer. I thought I gave strict orders that they were not
tD be permitted guns."

Again it was the horseman who spoke. "They don't use
guns."

"What?" the President said. "But I saw myself . . ."

"No, sir. They use knives. They track the deer down and
slip up on them and cut their throats."

388 The Wilderness

"What?" the President said.

"All right, sir. I seen one of the deer. It never had a mark
on it except its throat cut up to the neckbone with one lick."

Again the President said, "Damn. Damn. Damn." Then the
President ceased and the Soldier cursed steadily for a while.
The others listened, gravely, their faces carefully averted,
save the Secretary, who had taken up another paper. "If you
could just persuade them to keep their pantaloons on," the
President said. "At least about the House. . . ."

The Secretary started back, his hair upcrested like an out-
raged, iron-gray cockatoo. "I, sir? / persuade them?"

"Why not? Aren't they subject to your Department? I'm
just the President. Confound it, it's got to where my wife no
longer dares leave her bedroom, let alone receive lady guests.
How am I to explain to the French Ambassador, for instance,
why his wife no longer dares call upon my wife because the
corridors and the very entrance to the House are blocked by
half-naked Chickasaw Indians asleep on the floor or gnawing
at half-raw ribs of meat? And I, myself, having to hide away
from my own table and beg breakfast, while the official rep-
resentative of the Government has nothing to do but . . ."

". . . but explain again each morning to the Treasury," the
Secretary said in shrill rage, "why another Dutch farmer in
Pennsylvania or New York must have three hundred dollars
in gold in payment for the destruction of his farm and live-
stock, and explain to the State Department that the capital is
not being besieged by demons from hell itself, and explain to
the War Department why twelve brand-new army tents
must be ventilated at the top with butcher knives. . . ."

"I noticed that, too," the President said mildly. "I had for-
got it."

"Ha. Your Excellency noted it," the Secretary said
fiercely. "Your Excellency saw it and then forgot it. I have
neither seen it nor been permitted to forget it. And now

Lo! 389

Your Excellency wonders why / do not persuade them to
wear their pantaloons."

"It does seem like they would," the President said fretfully.
"The other garments seem to please them well enough. But
there's no accounting for taste." He ate again. The Secretary
looked at him, about to speak. Then he did not. As he
watched the oblivious President a curious, secret expression
came into his face; his gray and irate crest settled slowly, as
if it were deflating itself. When he spoke now his tone was
bland, smooth; now the other three men were watching the
President with curious, covert expressions.

"Yes," the Secretary said, "there's no accounting for taste.
Though it does seem that when one has been presented with
a costume as a mark of both honor and esteem, let alone
decorum, and by the chief of a well, tribe . . ."

"That's what I thought," the President said innocently.
Then he ceased chewing and said "Eh?" sharply, looking up.
The three lesser men looked quickly away, but the Secretary
continued to watch the President with that bland, secret ex-
pression. "What the devil do you mean?" the President said.
He knew what the Secretary meant, just as the other three
knew. A day or two after his guest had arrived without
warning, and after the original shock had somewhat abated,
the President had decreed the new clothing for them. He
commanded, out of his own pocket, merchants and hatters as
he would have commanded gunsmiths and bulletmakers in
war emergency; incidentally he was thus able to estimate the
number of them, the men at least, and within forty-eight
hours he had transformed his guest's grave and motley train
into the outward aspect of decorum at least. Then, two morn-
ings after that, the guest — the half Chickasaw, half French-
man, the squat, obese man with the face of a Gascon brigand
and the mannerisms of a spoiled eunuch and dingy lace at
throat and wrist, who for three weeks now had doerged his

390 The Wilderness

waking hours and his sleeping dreams with bland inescapa-
bility — called formally upon him while he and his wife were
still in bed at five o'clock in the morning, with two of his
retainers carrying a bundle and what seemed to the President
at least a hundred others, men, women and children, throng-
ing quietly into the bedroom, apparently to watch him array
himself in it. For it was a costume — even in the shocked
horror of the moment, the President found time to wonder
wildly where in the capital Weddel (or Vidal) had found it
— a mass, a network, of gold braid — frogs, epaulets, sash and
sword — held loosely together by bright green cloth and pre-
sented to him in return. This is what the Secretary meant,
while the President glared at him and while behind them both
the three other men stood looking at the fire with immobile
gravity. "Have your joke," the President said. "Have it
quickly. Are you done laughing now?"

"I laugh?" the Secretary said. "At what?"

"Good," the President said. He thrust the dishes from him.
"Then we can get down to business. Have you any docu-
ments you will need to refer to?"

The Secretary's secretary approached. "Shall I get the
other papers, sir?"

"Papers?" the Secretary said; once more his crest began to
rise. "What the devil do I need with papers? What else have
I thought about night and day for three weeks?"

"Good; good," the President said. "Suppose you review
the matter briefly, in case I have forgot anything else."

"Your Excellency is indeed a fortunate man, if you have
been able to forget," the Secretary said. From the pocket of
his dressing gown he took a pair of steel-bowed spectacles.
But he used them merely to glare again at the President in
cockatoo-crested outrage. "This man, Weddel, Vidal — whats
ever his name is — he and his family or clan or whatever they
are — claim to own the entire part of Mississippi which lies

Lo! 391

on the west side of this river in question. Oh, the grant is in
order: that French father of his from New Orleans saw to
that. — Well, it so happens that facing his home or plantation
is the only ford in about three hundred miles."

"I know all this," the President said impatiently. "Nat-
urally I regret now that there was any way of crossing the
river at all. But otherwise I don't see . . ."

"Neither did they," the Secretary said. "Until the white
man came."

"Ah," the President said. "The man who was mur . . ."

The Secretary raised his hand. "Wait. He stayed about a
month with them, ostensibly hunting, since he would be ab-
sent all day long, though obviously what he was doing was
assuring himself that there was no other ford close by. He
never brought any game in; I imagine they laughed at that a
good deal, in their pleasant way."

"Yes," the President said. "Weddel must have found that
very amusing."

". . . or Vidal — whatever his name is," the Secretary said
fretfully. "He don't even seem to know or even to care what
his own name is."

"Get on," the President said. "About the ford."

"Yes. Then one day, after a month, the white man offered
to buy some of Weddel's land — Weddel, Vidal — Damn,
da . . ."

"Call him Weddel," the President said.

". . . from Weddel. Not much; a piece about the size of this

room, for which Weddel or V charged him about ten

prices. Not out of any desire for usufruct, you understand;
doubtless Weddel would have given the man the land or
anyway wagered it on a game of mumble peg, it not having
yet occurred to any of them apparently that the small plot
which the man wanted contained the only available entrance
to or exit from the ford. Doubtless the trading protracted it-

392 The Wilderness

self over several days or perhaps weeks, as a kind of game to
while away otherwise idle afternoons or evenings, with the
bystanders laughing heartily and pleasantly at the happy
scene. They must have laughed a great deal, especially when
the man paid Weddel's price; they must have laughed hugely
indeed later when they watched the white man out in the
sun, building a fence around his property, it doubtless not
even then occurring to them that what the white man had
done was to fence off the only entrance to the ford."

"Yes," the President said impatiently. "But I still don't
see . . ."

Again the Secretary lifted his hand, pontifical, admonitory.
"Neither did they; not until the first traveler came along and
crossed at the ford. The white man had built himself a toll-
gate."

"Oh," the President said.

"Yes. And now it must have been, indeed, amusing for
them to watch the white man sitting now in the shade — he
had a deerskin pouch fastened to a post for the travelers to
drop their coins in, and the gate itself arranged so he could
operate it by a rope from the veranda of his one-room domi-
cile without having to even leave his seat; and to begin to
acquire property — among which was the horse."

"Ah," the President said. "Now we are getting at it."

"Yes. They got at it swiftly from then on. It seems that
the match was between the white man's horse and this neph-
ew's horse, the wager the ford and tollgate against a thousand
or so acres of land. The nephew's horse lost. And that
night . . ."

"Ah," the President said. "I see. And that night the white
man was mur . . ."

"Let us say, died," the Secretary said primly, "since it is so
phrased in the agent's report. Though he did add in a private

Lo! 393

communication that the white man's disease seemed to be a
split skull. But that is neither here nor there."

"No," the President said. "It's up yonder at the House."
Where they had been for three weeks now, men, women,
children and Negro slaves, coming for fifteen hundred miles
in slow wagons since that day in late autumn when the
Chickasaw agent had appeared to inquire into the white man's
death. For fifteen hundred miles, across winter swamps and
rivers, across the trackless eastern backbone of the continent,
led by the bland, obese mongrel despot and patriarch in a
carriage, dozing, his nephew beside him and one fat, ringed
hand beneath its fall of soiled lace lying upon the nephew's
knee to hold him in charge. "Why didn't the agent stop
him?" the President said.

"Stop him?" the Secretary cried. "He finally compromised
to the extent of offering to allow the nephew to be tried on
the spot, by the Indians themselves, he reserving only the in-
tention of abolishing the tollgate, since no one knew the
white man anyway. But no. The nephew must come to you,
to be absolved or convicted in person."

"But couldn't the agent stop the rest of them? Keep the
rest of them from . . ."

"Stop them?" the Secretary cried again. "Listen. He
moved in there and lived — Weddel, Vi — Damn! damn!!
Where was — Yes. Weddel told him that the house was his;
soon it was. Because how could he tell there were fewer faces
present each morning than the night before? Could you have?
Could you now?"

"I wouldn't try," the President said. "I would just declare
a national thanksgiving. So they slipped away at night."

"Yes. Weddel and the carriage and a few forage wagons
went first; they had been gone about a month before the
agent realized that each morning the number which remained
had diminished somewhat. They would load the wagons and

394 The Wilderness

go at night, by families — grandparents, parents, children;
slaves, chattels and dogs — everything. And why not? Why
should they deny themselves this holiday at the expense of
the Government? Why should they miss, at the mere price
of a fifteen-hundred-mile journey through unknown coun-
try in the dead of winter, the privilege and pleasure of spend-
ing a few weeks or months in new beavers and broadcloth
coats and underdrawers, in the home of the beneficent White
Fafher?"

"Yes," the President said. He said: "And you have told him
that there is no charge here against this nephew? "

"Yes. And that if they will go back home, the agent him-
self will declare the nephew innocent publicly, in whatever
ceremony they think fit. And he said — how was it he put it?"
The Secretary now spoke in a pleasant, almost lilting tone, in
almost exact imitation of the man whom he repeated: 'All
we desire is justice. If this foolish boy has murdered a white
man, I think that we should know it."

"Damn, damn, damn," the President said. "All right. We'll
hold the investigation. Get them down here and let's have it
over with."

"Here?" The Secretary started back. "In my house?"

"Why not? I've had them for three weeks; at least you can
have them for an hour." He turned to the companion.
"Hurry. Tell them we are waiting here to hold his nephew's
trial."

And now the President and the Secretary sat behind the
cleared table and looked at the man who stood as though
framed by the opened doors through which he had entered,
holding his nephew by the hand like an uncle conducting for
the first time a youthful provincial kinsman into a metro-
politan museum of wax figures. Immobile, they contem-
plated the soft, paunchy man facing them with his soft, bland,

Lo! 395

inscrutable face — the long, monk-like nose, the slumbrous
lids, the flabby, cafe-au-lait-colored jowls above a froth of
soiled lace of an elegance fifty years outmoded and vanished;
the mouth was full, small, and very red. Yet somewhere be-
hind the face's expression of flaccid and weary disillusion, as
behind the bland voice and the almost feminine mannerisms,
there lurked something else: something willful, shrewd, un-
predictable and despotic. Behind him clotted, quiet and
gravely decorous, his dark retinue in beavers and broadcloth
and woolen drawers, each with his neatly rolled pantaloons
beneath his arm.

For a moment longer he stood, looking from face to face
until he found the President. He said, in a voice of soft re-
proach: "This is not your house/'

"No," the President said. "This is the house of this chief
whom I have appointed myself to be the holder of justice
between me and my Indian people. He will deal justice to
you."

The uncle bowed slightly. "That is all that we desire."

"Good," the President said. On the table before him sat
inkstand, quill, and sandbox, and many papers with ribbons
and golden seals much in evidence, though none could have
said if the heavy gaze had remarked them or not. The Presi-
dent looked at the nephew. Young, lean, the nephew stood,
his right wrist clasped by his uncle's fat, lace-foamed hand,
and contemplated the President quietly, with grave and alert
repose. The President dipped the quill into the ink. "Is this
the man who . . ."

"Who performed this murder?" the uncle said pleasantly.
"That is what we made this long winter's journey to dis-
cover. If he did, if this white man really did not fall from that
swift horse of his perhaps and strike his head upon a sharp
stone, then this nephew of mine should be punished. We do
not think that it is right to slay white men like a confounded

396 The Wilderness

Cherokee or Creek." Perfectly inscrutable, perfectly deco-
rous, he looked at the two exalted personages playing behind
the table their clumsy deception with dummy papers; for an
instant the President himself met the slumbrous eyes and
looked down. The Secretary though, upthrust, his crest
roached violently upward, glared at the uncle.

"You should have held this horse-race across the ford it-
self," he said. "Water wouldn't have left that gash in the
white man's skull."

The President, glancing quickly up, saw the heavy, secret
face musing upon the Secretary with dark speculation. But
almost immediately the uncle spoke. "So it would. But this
white man would have doubtless required a coin of money
from my nephew for passing through his gate." Then he
laughed, mirthful, pleasant, decorous. "Perhaps it would have
been better for that white man if he had allowed my nephew
to pass through free. But that is neither here nor there now."

"No," the President said, almost sharply, so that they
looked at him again. He held the quill above the paper,
"What is the correct name? Weddel or Vidal?"

Again the pleasant, inflectionless voice came: "Weddel or
Vidal. What does it matter by what name the White Chief
calls us? We are but Indians: remembered yesterday and for-
gotten tomorrow."

The President wrote upon the paper. The quill scratched
steadily in the silence in which there was but one other
sound: a faint, steady, minor sound which seemed to emerge
from the dark and motionless group behind the uncle and
nephew. He sanded what he had written and folded it and
rose and stood for a moment so while they watched him
quietly — the soldier who had commanded men well on more
occasions than this. "Your nephew is not guilty of this mur-
der. My chief whom I have appointed to hold justice be*

Lo! 397

tween us says for him to return home and never do this again,
because next time he will be displeased."

His voice died into a shocked silence; even for that instant
the heavy lids fluttered, while from the dark throng behind
him that faint, unceasing sound of quiet scratching by heat
and wool engendered, like a faint, constant motion of the
sea, also ceased for an instant. The uncle spoke in a tone of
shocked unbelief: "My nephew is free?"

"He is free," the President said. The uncle's shocked gaze
traveled about the room.

"This quick? And in here? In this house? I had thought.
. . . But no matter." They watched him; again the face was
smooth, enigmatic, blank. "We are only Indians; doubtless
these busy white men have but little time for our small affairs.
Perhaps we have already incommoded them too much."

"No, no," the President said quickly. "To me, my Indian
and my white people are the same." But again the uncle's
gaze was traveling quietly about the room; standing side by
side, the President and the Secretary could feel from one to
another the same dawning alarm. After a while the President
said: "Where had you expected this council to be held?"

The uncle looked at him. "You will be amused. In my ig-
norance I had thought that even our little affair would have
been concluded in ... But no matter."

"In what?" the President said.

The bland, heavy face mused again upon him for a mo-
ment. "You will laugh; nevertheless, I will obey you. In the
big white council house beneath the golden eagle."

"What?" the Secretary cried, starting again. "In the . . ."

The uncle looked away. "I said that you would be amused.
But no matter. We will have to wait, anyway."

"Have to wait?" the President said. "For what?"

"This is really amusing," the uncle said. He laughed again,
in his tone of mirthful detachment. "More of my people are

398 The Wilderness

about to arrive. We can wait for them, since they will wish
to see and hear also." No one exclaimed at all now, not even
the Secretary. They merely stared at him while the bland
voice went on: "It seems that some of them mistook the
town. They had heard the name of the White Chief's capital
spoken, but it so happens that there is also a town in our coun-
try with the same name, so that when some of the People
inquired on the road, they became misdirected and went
there instead, poor ignorant Indians." He laughed, with fond
and mirthful tolerance behind his enigmatic and sleepy face.
"But a messenger has arrived; they will arrive themselves
within the week. Then we will see about punishing this head-
strong boy." He shook the nephew's arm lightly. Except for
this the nephew did not move, watching the President with
his grave and unwinking regard.

For a long moment there was no sound save the faint,
steady scratching of the Indians. Then the Secretary began to
speak, patiently, as though addressing a child: "Look. Your
nephew is free. This paper says that he did not slay the white
man and that no man shall so accuse him again, else both I
and the great chief beside me will be angered. He can return
home now, at once. Let all of you return home at once. For
is it not well said that the graves of a man's fathers are never
quiet in his absence?"

Again there was silence. Then the President said, "Besides,
the white council house beneath the golden eagle is being
used now by a council of chiefs who are more powerful there
than I am."

The uncle's hand lifted; foamed with soiled lace, his fore-
finger waggled in reproachful deprecation. "Do not ask even
an ignorant Indian to believe that," he said. Then he said,
with no change of inflection whatever; the Secretary did not
know until the President told him later, that the uncle was
now addressing him: "And these chiefs will doubtless be oc-

Lo! 399

copying the white council hut for some time yet, I suppose."

"Yes," the Secretary said. "Until the last snow of winter
has melted among the flowers and the green grass."

"Good," the uncle said. "We will wait, then. Then the
rest of the People will have time to arrive."

And so it was that up that Avenue with a high destiny the
cavalcade moved in the still falling snow, led by the carriage
containing the President and the uncle and nephew, the fat,
ringed hand lying again upon the nephew's knee, and fol-
lowed by a second carriage containing the Secretary and his
secretary, and this followed in turn by two files of soldiers
between which walked the dark and decorous cloud of men,
women and children on foot and in arms; so it was that be-
hind the Speaker's desk of that chamber which was to womb
and contemplate the high dream of a destiny superior to the
injustice of events and the folly of mankind, the President
and the Secretary stood, while below them, ringed about by
the living manipulators of, and interspersed by the august
and watching ghosts of the dreamers of, the destiny, the
uncle and nephew stood, with behind them the dark throng
of kin and friends and acquaintances from among which
came steadily and unabated that faint sound of wool and
flesh in friction. The President leaned to the Secretary.

"Are they ready with the cannon?" he whispered. "Are
you sure they can see my arm from the door? And suppose
those damned guns explode: they have not been fired since
Washington shot them last at Cornwallis: will they impeach
me?"

"Yes," the Secretary hissed.

"Then God help us. Give me the book." The Secretary
passed it to him: it was Petrarch's Sonnets, which the Secre-
tary had snatched from his table in passing. "Let us hope that
I remember enough law Latin to keep it from sounding like
either English or Chickasaw," the President said. He opened

400 The Wilderness

the book, and then again the President, the conqueror of
men, the winner of battles diplomatic, legal and martial, drew
himself erect and looked down upon the dark, still, intent,
waiting faces; when he spoke his voice was the voice which
before this had caused men to pause and attend and then
obey: "Francis Weddel, chief in the Chickasaw Nation, and
you, nephew of Francis Weddel and some day to be a chief,
hear my words." Then he began to read. His voice was full,
sonorous, above the dark faces, echoing about the august
dome in profound and solemn syllables. He read ten sonnets.
Then, with his arm lifted, he perorated; his voice died pro-
foundly away and he dropped his arm. A moment later, from
outside the building, came a ragged crash of artillery. And
now for the first time the dark throng stirred; from among
them came a sound, a murmur, of pleased astonishment. The
President spoke again: "Nephew of Francis Weddel, you are
free. Return to your home."

And now the uncle spoke; again his finger waggled from
out its froth of lace. "Heedless boy," he said. "Consider the
trouble which you have caused these busy men." He turned
to the Secretary, almost briskly; again his voice was bland,
pleasant, almost mirthful: "And now, about the little matter
of this cursed ford. . . ."

With the autumn sun falling warmly and pleasantly across
his shoulders, the President said, "That is all," quietly and
turned to his desk as the secretary departed. While he took
up the letter and opened it the sun fell upon his hands and
upon the page, with its inference of the splendid dying of
the year, of approaching harvests and of columns of quiet
wood smoke — serene pennons of peace — above peaceful
chimneys about the land.

Suddenly the President started; he sprang up, the letter in
his hand, glaring at it in shocked and alarmed consternation

Lo! 401

while the bland words seemed to explode one by one in his
comprehension like musketry:

Dear sir and friend:

This is really amusing. Again this hot-headed nephew —
he must have taken his character from his father's people,
since it is none of mine — has come to trouble you and me. It
is this cursed ford again. Another white man came among us,
to hunt in peace we thought, since God's forest and the deer
which He put in it belong to all. But he too became obsessed
with the idea of owning this ford, having heard tales of his
own kind who, after the curious and restless fashion of white
men, find one side of a stream of water superior enough to
the other to pay coins of money for the privilege of reaching
it. So the affair was arranged as this white man desired it.
Perhaps I did wrong, you will say. But — do I need to tell
you? — / am a simple man and some day I shall be old, I trust,
and the continuous interruption of these white men who
wish to cross and the collecting and care of the coins of
money is only a nuisance. For what can money be to me,
whose destiny it apparently is to spend my declining years
beneath the shade of familiar trees from whose peaceful
shade my great white friend and chief has removed the face
of every enemy save death? That was my thought, but when
you read farther you will see that it was not to be.

Once more it is this rash and heedless boy. It seems that he
challenged this new white man of ours (or the white man
challenged him: the truth / will leave to your unerring wis-
dom to unravel) to a swimming race in the river, the stakes
to be this cursed ford against a few miles of land, which
(this will amuse you) this wild nephew of mine did not even
own. The race took place, but unfortunately our white man
failed to emerge from the river until after he was dead. And
now your agent has arrived* and he seems to feel that perhaps

402 The Wilderness

this swimming race should not have taken place at all. And
so now there is nothing for me to do save to bestir old bones
and bring this rash boy to you for you to reprimand him. We
'" arrive in about . . .

The President sprang to the bell and pulled it violently.
When his secretary entered, he grasped the man by the
shoulders and whirled him toward the door again. "Get me
the Secretary of War, and maps of all the country between
here and New Orleans!" he cried. "Hurry."

And so again we see him; the President is absent now and
it is the Soldier alone who sits with the Secretary of War
behind the map-strewn table, while there face them the
officers of a regiment of cavalry. At the table his secretary is
writing furiously while the President looks over his shoulder.
"Write it big," he says, "so that even an Indian cannot mis-
take it. Know all men by these presents" he quotes. "Francis
Weddel his heirs, descendants and assigns from now on in
perpetuity . . . provided — Have you got provided? Good —
provided that neither he nor his do ever again cross to the
eastern side of the above described River. . . . And now to
that damned agent," he said. "The sign must be in duplicate,
at both ends of the ford: The United States accepts no re-
sponsibility for any man, woman or child, black, white, yel-
low or red, who crosses this ford, and no white man shall buy,
lease or accept it as a gift save under the severest penalty of
the law. Can I do that?"

"I'm afraid not, Your Excellency," the Secretary said.
The President mused swiftly. "Damn," he said. "Strike out
The United States, then." The Secretary did so. The Presi-
dent folded the two papers and handed them to the cavalry
colonel. "Ride," he said. "Your orders are, Stop them."

"Suppose they refuse to stop," the colonel said. "Shall I
fire then?"

Lo! 403

"Yes," the President said. "Shoot every horse, mule, and
ox. I know they won't walk. Off with you, now." The offi-
cers withdrew. The President turned back to the maps — the
Soldier still: eager, happy, as though he rode himself with
the regiment, or as if in spirit already he deployed it with
that shrewd cunning which could discern and choose the
place most disadvantageous to the enemy, and get there first.
"It will be here," he said. He put his finger on the map. "A
horse, General, that I may meet him here and turn his flank
and drive him."

"Done, General," the Secretary said.

IV • THE WASTELAND

Ad Astra

Victory

Crevasse

Turnabout

All the Dead Pilots

Ad Astra

I DONT KNOW what we were. With the exception of Comyn,
we had started out Americans, but after three years, in our
British tunics and British wings and here and there a ribbon,
I dont suppose we had even bothered in three years to
wonder what we were, to think or to remember.

And on that day, that evening, we were even less than
that, or more than that: either beneath or beyond the knowl-
edge that we had not even wondered in three years. The
subadar — after a while he was there, in his turban and his
trick major's pips — said that we were like men trying to
move in water. "But soon it will clear away," he said. "The
effluvium of hatred and of words. We are like men trying
to move in water, with held breath watching our terrific
and infinitesimal limbs, watching one another's terrific stasis
without touch, without contact, robbed of all save the im-
potence and the need."

We were in the car then, going to Amiens, Sartoris driv-
ing and Comyn sitting half a head above him in the front
seat like a tackling dummy, the subadar, Bland and I in
back, each with a bottle or two in his pockets. Except the
subadar, that is. He was squat, small and thick, yet his so-
briety was colossal. In that maelstrom of alcohol where the
rest of us had fled our inescapable selves he was like a rock,

408 The Wasteland

talking quietly in a grave bass four sizes too big for him:
"In my country I was prince. But all men are brothers."

But after twelve years I think of us as bugs in the surface
of the water, isolant and aimless and unflagging. Not on the
surface; in it, within that line of demarcation not air and not
water, sometimes submerged, sometimes not. You have
watched an unbreaking groundswell in a cove, the water
shallow, the cove quiet, a little sinister with satiate famili-
arity, while beyond the darkling horizon the dying storm
has raged on. That was the water, we the flotsam. Even
after twelve years it is no clearer than that. It had no begin-
ning and no ending. Out of nothing we howled, unwitting
the storm which we had escaped and the foreign strand
which we could not escape; that in the interval between two
surges of the swell we died who had been too young to have
ever lived.

We stopped in the middle of the road to drink again. The
land was dark and empty. And quiet: that was what you
noticed, remarked. You could hear the earth breathe, like
coming out of ether, like it did not yet know, believe, that
it was awake. "But now it is peace," the subadar said. "All
men are brothers."

"You spoke before the Union once," Bland said. He was
blond and tall. When he passed through a room where
women were he left a sighing wake like a ferry boat enter-
ing the slip. He was a Southerner, too, like Sartoris; but
unlike Sartoris, in the five months he had been out, no one
had ever found a bullet hole in his machine. But he had trans-
ferred out of an Oxford battalion — he was a Rhodes scholar
— with a barnacle and a wound-stripe. When he was tight
he would talk about his wife, though we all knew that he
was not married.

He took the bottle from Sartoris and drank. "I've got the
sweetest little wife," he said. "Let me tell YOU about her."

Ad Astra 409

"Dont tell us," Sartoris said. "Give her to Comyn. He
wants a girl."

"All right," Bland said. "You can have her, Comyn."

"Is she blonde?" Comyn said.

"I dont know," Bland said. He turned back to the subadar,
"You spoke before the Union once. I remember you."

"Ah," the subadar said. "Oxford. Yes."

"He can attend their schools among the gentleborn, the
bleach-skinned," Bland said. "But he cannot hold their com-
mission, because gentility is a matter of color and not lineage
or behavior."

"Fighting is more important than truth," the subadar said.
"So we must restrict the prestige and privileges of it to the
few so that it will not lose popularity with the many who
have to die."

"Why more important?" I said. "I thought this one was
being fought to end war forevermore."

The subadar made a brief gesture, dark, deprecatory,
tranquil. "I was a white man also for that moment. It is more
important for the Caucasian because he is only what he can
do; it is the sum of him."

"So you see further than we see?"

"A man sees further looking out of the dark upon the
light than a man does in the light and looking out upon the
light. That is the principle of the spyglass. The lens is only to
tease him with that which the sense that suffers and desires
can never affirm."

"What do you see, then?" Bland said.

"I see girls," Comyn said. "I see acres and acres of the
yellow hair of them like wheat and me among the wheat.
Have ye ever watched a hidden dog quartering a wheat field,
any of yez?"

"Not hunting bitches," Bland said.

Comyn turned in the seat, thick and huge. He was big as

410 The Wasteland

all outdoors. To watch two mechanics shoehorning him into
the cockpit of a Dolphin like two chambermaids putting an
emergency bolster into a case too small for it, was a sight to
see. "I will beat the head off ye for a shilling," he said.

"So you believe in the Tightness of man?" I said.

"I will beat the heads off yez all for a shilling," Comyn
said.

"I believe in the pitiableness of man," the subadar said.
"That is better."

"I will give yez a shilling, then,v/ Comyn said.

"All right," Sartoris said. "Did you ever try a little whisky
for the night air, any of you all?"

Comyn took the bottle and drank. "Acres and acres of
them," he said, "with their little round white woman parts
gleaming among the moiling wheat."

So we drank again, on the lonely road between two beet
fields, in the dark quiet, and the turn of the inebriation
began to make. It came back from wherever it had gone,
rolling down upon us and upon the grave sober rock of the
subadar until his voice sounded remote and tranquil and
dreamlike, saying that we were brothers. Monaghan was
there then, standing beside our car in the full glare of the
headlights of his car, in an R.F.C. cap and an American tunic
with both shoulder straps flapping loose, drinking from
Comyn's bottle. Beside him stood a second man, also in a
tunic shorter and trimmer than ours, with a bandage about
his head.

"I'll fight you," Comyn told Monaghan. "I'll give you
the shilling."

"All right," Monaghan said. He drank again.

"We are all brothers," the subadar said. "Sometimes we
pause at the wrong inn. We think it is night and we stop,
when it is not night. That is all."

"I'll give you a sovereign," Comyn told Monaghan.

Ad Astra 411

"All right," Monaghan said. He extended the bottle to
the other man, the one with the bandaged head.

"I thangk you," the man said. "I haf plenty yet."

"I'll fight him," Comyn said.

"It is because we can do only within the heart," the
subadar said. "While we see beyond the heart."

"I'll be damned if you will," Monaghan said. "He's mine."
He turned to the man with the bandaged head. "Aren't you
mine? Here; drink."

"I haf plenty, I thangk you, gentlemen," the other said.
But I dont think any of us paid much attention to him until
we were inside the Cloche-Clos. It was crowded, full of
noise and smoke. When we entered all the noise ceased, like
a string cut in two, the end raveling back into a sort of
shocked consternation of pivoting faces, and the waiter — an
old man in a dirty apron — falling back before us, slack-
jawed, with an expression of outraged unbelief, like an
atheist confronted with either Christ or the devil. We
crossed the room, the waiter retreating before us, paced by
the turning outraged faces, to a table adjacent to one where
three French officers sat watching us with that same expres-
sion of astonishment and then outrage and then anger. As
one they rose; the whole room, the silence, became staccato
with voices, like machine guns. That was when I turned and
looked at Monaghan's companion for the first time, in his
green tunic and his black snug breeks and his black boots
and his bandage. He had cut himself recently shaving, and
with his bandaged head and his face polite and dazed and
bloodless and sick, he looked like Monaghan had been using
him pretty hard. Roundfaced, not old, with his immaculately
turned bandage which served only to emphasize the genera-
tions of difference between him and the turbaned subadar,
flanked by Monaghan with his wild face and wild tunic and
surrounded by the French people's shocked and outraged

412 The Wasteland

faces, he appeared to contemplate with a polite and alert
concern his own struggle against the inebriation which
Monaghan was forcing upon him. There was something
Anthony-like about him: rigid, soldierly, with every button
in place, with his unblemished bandage and his fresh razor
cuts, he appeared to muse furiously upon a clear flame of a
certain conviction of individual behavior above a violent
and inexplicable chaos. Then I remarked Monaghan's sec-
ond companion: an American military policeman. He was
not drinking. He sat beside the German, rolling cigarettes
from a cloth sack.

On the German's other side Monaghan was filling his
glass. "I brought him down this morning," he said. "I'm
going to take him home with me."

"Why?" Bland said. "What do you want with him?"

"Because he belongs to me," Monaghan said. He set the
full glass before the German. "Here; drink."

"I once thought about taking one home to my wife,"
Bland said. "So I could prove to her that I have only been
to a war. But I never could find a good one. A whole one,
I mean."

"Come on," Monaghan said. uDrink."

"I haf plenty," the German said. "All day I haf plenty."

"Do you want to go to America with him?" Bland said:

"Yes. I would ligk it. Thanks."

"Sure you'll like it," Monaghan said. "I'll make a man of
you. Drink,"

The German raised the glass, but he merely held it in his
hand. His face was strained, deprecatory, yet with a kind
of sereneness, like that of a man who has conquered himself.
I imagine some of the old martyrs must have looked at the
lions with that expression. He was sick, too. Not from the
liquor: from his head. "I haf in Beyreuth a wife and a little
wohn. Mine son. I haf not him yet seen."

Ad Astra 413

"Ah," the subadar said. "Beyreuth. I was there one
spring."

"Ah," the German said. He looked quickly at the subadar.
"So? The music?"

"Yes," the subadar said. "In your music a few of you have
felt, tasted, lived, the true brotherhood. The rest of us can
only look beyond the heart. But we can follow them for a
little while in the music."

"And then we must return," the German said. "That iss
not good. Why must we yet return always?"

"It is not the time for that yet," the subadar said. "But
soon ... It is not as far as it once was. Not now."

"Yes," the German said. "Defeat will be good for us.
Defeat iss good for art; victory, it iss not good."

"So you admit you were whipped," Comyn said. He was
sweating again, and Sartoris' nostrils were quite white, I
thought of what the subadar had said about men in water.
Only our water was drunkenness: that isolation of alcohol-
ism which drives men to shout and laugh and fight, not with
one another but with their unbearable selves which, drunk,
they are even more fain and still less fell to escape. Loud and
overloud, unwitting the black thunderhead of outraged
France (steadily the other tables were being emptied; the
other customers were now clotted about the high desk
where the patronne, an old woman in steel spectacles, sat, a
wad of knitting on the ledge before her) we shouted at one
another, speaking in foreign tongues out of our inescapable
isolations, reiterant, unlistened to by one another; while sub-
merged by us and more foreign still, the German and the
subadar talked quietly of music, art, the victory born of
defeat. And outside in the chill November darkness was the
suspension, the not-quite-believing, not-quite-awakened
nightmare, the breathing spell of the old verbiaged lusts and
the buntinged and panoplied greeds.

414 The Wasteland

"By God, I'm shanty Irish," Monaghan said. "That's what
I am."

"What about it?" Sartoris said, his nostrils like chalk
against his high-colored face. His twin brother had been
killed in July. He was in a Camel squadron below us, and
Sartoris was down there when it happened. For a week
after that, as soon as he came in from patrol he would fill
his tanks and drums and go out again, alone. One day some-
body saw him, roosting about five thousand feet above an
old Ak.W. I suppose the other guy who was with his brother
that morning had seen the markings on the Hun patrol
leader's crate; anyway, that's what Sartoris was doing, using
the Ak.W. for bait. Where he got it and who he got to fly
it, we didn't know. But he got three Huns that week, catch-
ing them dead when they dived on the Ak.W., and on the
eighth day he didn't go out again. "He must have got him,"
Hume said. But we didn't know. He never told us. But after
that, he was all right again. He never did talk much; just
did his patrols and maybe once a week he'd sit and drink his
nostrils white in a quiet sort of way.

Bland was filling his glass, a drop at a time almost, with
a catlike indolence. I could see why men didn't like him
and why women did. Comyn, his arms crossed on the table,
his cuff in a pool of spilt liquor, was staring at the German.
His eyes were bloodshot, a little protuberant. Beneath his
downcrushed monkey cap the American M.P. smoked his
meager cigarettes, his face quite blank. The steel chain of
his whistle looped into his breast pocket, his pistol was
hunched forward onto his lap. Beyond, the French people,
the soldiers, the waiter, the patronne, clotted at the desk. I
could hear their voices like from a distance, like crickets in
September grass, the shadows of their hands jerking up the
wall and flicking away.

"Fm not a soldier," Monaghan said. "I'm not a gentleman.

Ad Astra 415

I'm not anything." At the base of each flapping shoulder
strap there was a small rip; there were two longer ones
parallel above his left pocket where His wings and ribbon had
been. "I dont know what I am. I have been in this damn war
for three years and all I know is, I'm not dead. I — "

"How do you know you're not dead?" Bland said.

Monaghan looked at Bland, his mouth open upon his un-
completed word.

"I'll kill you for a shilling," Comyn said. "I dont like your
bloody face, Lootenant. Bloody lootenant."

"I'm shanty Irish," Monaghan said. "That's what I am.
My father was shanty Irish, by God. And I dont know what
my grandfather was. I dont know if I had one. My father
dont remember one. Likely it could have been one of several.
So he didn't even have to be a gentleman. He never had to
be. That's why he could make a million dollars digging
sewers in the ground. So he could look up at the tall glitter-
ing windows and say — I've heard him, and him smoking the
pipe would gas the puking guts out of you damn, niggling,
puny — "

"Are you bragging about your father's money or about
his sewers?" Bland said.

" — would look up at them and he'd say to me, he'd say,
'When you're with your fine friends, the fathers and mothers
and sisters of them you met at Yale, ye might just remind
them that every man is the slave of his own refuse and so
your old dad they would be sending around to the forty-
story back doors of their kitchens is the king of them all — '
What did you say?" He looked at Bland.

"Look here, buddy," the M.P. said. "This is about enough
of this. I've got to report this prisoner."

"Wait," Monaghan said. He did not cease to look at
Bland. "What did you say?"

4i 6 The Wasteland

"Are you bragging about your father's money or about
his sewers?" Bland said.

"No," Monaghan saW. "Why should I? Any more than
I would brag about the thirteen Huns I got, or the two rib-
bons, one of which his damned king — " he jerked his head at
Comyn — "gave me."

"Dont call him my damned king," Comyn said, his cuff
soaking slowly in the spilt liquor.

"Look," Monaghan said. He jerked his hand at the rips on
his flapping shoulder straps, at the two parallel rips on his
breast. "That's what I think of it. Of all your goddamn
twaddle about glory and gentlemen. I was young; I thought
you had to be. Then I was in it and there wasn't time to
stop even when I found it didn't count. But now it's over;
finished now. Now I can be what I am. Shanty Irish; son of
an immigrant that knew naught but shovel and pick until
youth and the time for pleasuring was wore out of him
before his time. Out of a peat bog he came, and his son went
to their gentlemen's school and returned across the water to
swank it with any of them that owned the peat bogs and the
bitter sweat of them that mired it, and the king said him
well."

"I will give yez the shilling and I will beat the head off
yez," Comyn said.

"But why do you want to take him back with you?"
Bland said. Monaghan just looked at Bland. There was some-
thing of the crucified about Monaghan, too: furious, inar-
ticulate not with stupidity but at it, like into him more than
any of us had distilled the ceased drums of the old lust and
greed waking at last aghast at their own impotence and ac-
crued despair. Bland sat on his spine, legs extended, his hands
in his slacks, his handsome face calmly insufferable. "What
stringed pick would he bow? maybe a shovel strung with
the ejut of an alley-cat? he will create perhaps in music the

Ad Astra 417

flushed toilets of Manhattan to play for your father after
supper of an evening?" Monaghan just looked at Bland with
that wild, rapt expression. Bland turned his lazy face a little
to the German.

"Look here," the M.P. said.

"You have a wife, Herr Lcutnant?" Bland said.

The German looked up. He glanced swiftly from face to
face. "Yes, thank you," he said. He still had not touched his
full glass save to hold it in his hand. But he was no nearer
sober than before, the liquor become the hurting of his head,
his head the pulse and beat of alcohol in him. "My people
are of Prussia little barons. There are four brothers: the sec-
ond for the Army, the third who did nothing in Berlin, the
little one a cadet of dragoons; I, the eldest, in the University.
There I learned. There wass a time then. It was as though
we, young from the quiet land, were brought together,
chosen and worthy to witness a period quick like a woman
with a high destiny of the earth and of man. It iss as though
the old trash, the old litter of man's blundering, iss to be
swept away for a new race that will in the heroic simplicity
of olden time walk the new earth. You knew that time,
not? When the eye sparkled, the blut ran quick?" He
looked about at our faces. "No? Well, in America perhaps
not. America iss new; in a new house it is not the litter so
much as in old." He looked at his glass for a moment, his
face tranquil. "I return home; I say to my father, in the
University I haf learned it iss not good; baron I will not be.
He cannot believe. He talks of Germany, the fatherland; I
say to him, It iss there; so. You say fatherland; I, brother-
land, I say, the word father iss that barbarism which
will be first swept away; it iss the symbol of that hierarchy
which hass stained the history of man with injustice of arbi-
trary instead of moral; force instead of love.

"From Berlin they send for that one; from the Army that

4i 8 The Wasteland

one comes. I still say baron I will not be, for it iss not good.
We are in the little hall where my ancestors on the walls
hang; I stand before them like court-martial; I say that
Franz must be baron, for I will not be. My father says you
can; you will; it iss for Germany. Then I say, For Germany
then will my wife be baroness? And like a court-martial I
tell them I haf married the daughter of a musician who wass
peasant.

"So it iss that. That one of Berlin iss to be baron. He and
Franz are twin, but Franz iss captain already, and the most
humble of the Army may eat meat with our kaiser; he does
not need to be baron. So I am in Beyreuth with my wife
and my music. It iss as though I am dead. I do not get letter
until to say my father iss dead and I haf killed him, and that
one iss now home from Berlin to be baron. But he does not
stay at home. In 1912 he iss in Berlin newspaper dead of a
lady's husband and so Franz iss baron after all.

"Then it iss war. But I am in Beyreuth with my wife and
my music, because we think that it will not be long, since
it was not long before. The fatherland in its pride needed
us of the schools, but when it needed us it did not know it.
And when it did realize that it needed us it wass too late and
any peasant who would be hard to die would do. And so — "

"Why did you go, then?" Bland said. "Did the women
make you? throw eggs at you, maybe?"

The German looked at Bland. "I am German; that iss
beyond the I, the I am. Not for baron and kaiser." Then he
quit looking at Bland without moving his eyes. "There wass
a Germany before there wass barons," he said. "And after,
there will be."

"Even after this?"

"More so. Then it was pride, a word in the mouth. Now
it is a — how you call it? . . ."

Ad Astra 419

"A nation vanquishes its banners," the subadar said. "A
man conquers himself."

"Or a woman a child bears," the German said.

"Out of the lust, the travail," the subadar said; "out of
the travail, the affirmation, the godhead; truth."

The M.P. was rolling another cigarette. He watched the
subadar, upon his face an expression savage, restrained, and
cold. He licked the cigarette and looked at me.

"When I came to this goddamn country," he said, "I
thought niggers were niggers. But now I'll be damned if I
know what they are. What's he? snake-charmer?"

"Yes," I said. "Snake-charmer."

"Then he better get his snake out and beat it. I've got to
report this prisoner. Look at those frogs yonder." As I
turned and looked three of the Frenchmen were leaving the
room, insult and outrage in the shapes of their backs. The
German was talking again.

"I hear by the newspapers how Franz is colonel and then
general, and how the cadet, who wass still the round-headed
boy part of a gun always when I last saw him, iss now ace
with iron cross by the kaiser's own hand. Then it iss 1916.
I see by the paper how the cadet iss killed by your Bishop — "
he bowed slightly to Comyn — "that good man. So now I
am cadet myself. It iss as though I know. It iss as though I
see what iss to be. So I transfer to be aviator, and yet though
I know now that Franz iss general of staff and though to
myself each night I say, 'You have again returned,' I know
that it iss no good.

"That, until our kaiser fled. Then I learn that Franz iss
now in Berlin; I believe that there iss a truth, that we haf
not forfeited all in pride, because we know it will not be
much longer now, and Franz in Berlin safe, the fighting
away from.

"Then it iss this morning. Then comes the letter in my

420 The Wasteland

mother's hand that I haf not seen in seven years, addressed
to me as baron. Franz iss shot from his horse by German
soldier in Berlin street. It iss as though all had been forgotten,
because women can forget all that quick, since to them
nothing iss real — truth, justice, all — nothing that cannot be
held in the hands or cannot die. So I burn all my papers, the
picture of my wife and my son that I haf not yet seen,
destroy my identity disk and remove all insignia from my
tunic — " he gestured toward his collar.

"You mean," Bland said, "that you had no intention of
coming back? Why didn't you take a pistol to yourself and
save your government an aeroplane?"

"Suicide iss just for the body," the German said. "The
body settles nothing. It iss of no importance. It iss just to
be kept clean when possible."

"It is merely a room in the inn," the subadar said. "It is
just where we hide for a little while."

"The lavatory," Bland said; "the toilet."

The M.P. rose. He tapped the German on the shoulder.
Comyn was staring at the German.

"So you admit you were whipped," he said.

"Yes," the German said. "It wass our time first, because
we were the sickest. It will be your England's next. Then
she too will be well."

"Dont say my England," Comyn said. "I am of the Irish
nation." He turned to Monaghan. "You said, my damned
king. Dont say my damned king. Ireland has had no king
since the Ur Neill, God bless the red-haired stern of him."

Rigid, controlled, the German made a faint gesture. "You
see?" he said to no one at all.

"The victorious lose that ^hich the vanquished gain," the
subadar said.

"And what will vou do now?" Bland said.

Ad Astra 42 1

The German did not answer. He sat bolt upright with
his sick face and his immaculate bandage.

"What will you do?" the subadar said to Bland. "What
will any of us do? All this generation which fought in the
war are dead tonight. But we do not yet know it."

We looked at the subadar: Comyn with his bloodshot
pig's eyes, Sartoris with his white nostrils, Bland slumped
in his chair, indolent, insufferable, with his air of a spoiled
woman. Above the German the M.P. stood.

"It seems to worry you a hell of a lot," Bland said.

"You do not believe?" the subadar said. "Wait. You will
see."

"Wait?" Bland said. "I dont think I've done anything in
the last three years to have acquired that habit. In the last
twenty-six years. Before that I dont remember. I may have."

"Then you will see sooner than waiting," the subadar said.
"You will see." He looked about at us, gravely serene.
"Those who have been four years rotting out yonder — "
he waved his short thick arm — "are not more dead than we."

Again the M.P. touched the German's shoulder. "Hell,"
he said. "Come along, buddy." Then he turned his head and
we all looked up at the two Frenchmen, an officer and a
sergeant, standing beside the table. For a while we just re-
mained so. It was like all the little bugs had suddenly found
that their orbits had coincided and they wouldn't even have
to be aimless any more or even to keep on moving. Beneath
the alcohol I could feel that hard, hot ball beginning in my
stomach, like in combat, like when you know something is
about to happen; that instant when you think Now. Now
I can dump everything overboard and just be. Now. Now.
It is quite pleasant.

"Why is that here, monsieur?" the officer said. Monaghan
looked up at him, thrust backward and sideways in his chair,
poised on the balls of his thighs as though they were feet,

422 The Wasteland

his arm lying upon the table. "Why do you make desagre-
able for France, monsieur, eh?" the officer said.

Someone grasped Monaghan as he rose; it was the M.P.
behind him, holding him half risen. "Wa-a-a-i-daminute,"
the M.P. said; "wa-a-a-i-daminute." The cigarette bobbed
on his lower lip as he talked, his hands on Monaghan's shoul-
ders, the brassard on his arm lifted into bold relief. "What's
it to you, Frog? " he said. Behind the officer and the sergeant
the other French people stood, and the old woman. She was
trying to push through the circle. "This is my prisoner," the
M.P. said. "I'll take him anywhere I please and keep him
there as long as I like. What do you think about that?"

"By which authority, monsieur?" the officer said. He was
tall, with a gaunt, tragic face. I saw then that one of his eyes
was glass. It was motionless, rigid in a face that looked even
deader than the spurious eye.

The M.P. glanced toward his brassard, then instead he
looked at the officer again and tapped the pistol swinging
low now against his flank. "I'll take him all over your god-
damn lousy country. I'll take him into your goddamn senate
and kick your president up for a chair for him and you can
suck your chin until I come back to wipe the latrine off
your feet again."

"Ah," the officer said, "a devil-dog, I see." He said "dehvil-
dahg" between his teeth, with no motion of his dead face,
in itself insult. Behind him the patronne began to shriek in
French:

"Boche! Boche! Broken! Broken! Every cup, every saucer,
glass, plate — all, all! I will show you! I have kept them for this
day. Eight months since the obus I have kept them in a box
against this day: plates, cups, saucers, glasses, all that I have
had since thirty years, all gone, broken at one time! And it
costing me fifty centimes the glass for such that I shame
myself to have my patrons — "

Ad Astra 423

There is an unbearable point, a climax, in weariness. Even
alcohol cannot approach it. Mobs are motivated by it, by
a sheer attenuation of sameness become unbearable. As
Monaghan rose, the M.P. flung him back. Then it was as
though we all flung everything overboard at once, facing
unbashed and without shame the specter which for four
years we had been decking out in high words, leaping for-
ward with concerted and orderly promptitude each time
the bunting slipped. I saw the M.P. spring at the officer, then
Corny n rose and met him. I saw the M.P. hit Corny n three
times on the point of the jaw with his fist before Corny n
picked him up bodily and threw him clean over the crowd,
where he vanished, horizontal in midair, tugging at his pistol.
I saw three poilus on Monaghan's back and the officer trying
to hit him with a bottle, and Sartoris leaping upon the offi-
cer from behind. Comyn was gone; through the gap which
he had made the patronne emerged, shrieking. Two men
caught at her and she strove forward, trying to spit on the
German. "Boche! Boche!" she shrieked, spitting and slob-
bering, her gray hair broken loose about her face; she turned
and spat full at me. "Thou, too!" she shrieked, "it was not
England that was devastated! Thou, too, come to pick the
bones of France. Jackal! Vulture! Animal! Broken, broken!
All! All! All!" And beneath it all, unmoved, unmoving, alert,
watchful and contained, the German and the subadar sat,
the German with his high, sick face, the subadar tranquil as
a squat idol, the both of them turbaned like prophets in the
Old Testament.

It didn't take long. There was no time in it. Or rather, we
were outside of time; within, not on, that surface, that de-
marcation between the old where we knew we had not died
and the new where the subadar said that we were dead.
Beyond the brandished bottles, the blue sleeves and the
grimed hands, the faces like masks grimaced into rigid and

424 The Wasteland

soundless shouts to frighten children, I saw Comyn again.
He came plowing up like a laden ship in a chop sea; beneath
his arm was the ancient waiter, to his lips he held the M.P.'s
whistle. Then Sartoris swung a chair at the single light.

It was cold in the street, a cold that penetrated the cloth-
ing, the alcohol-distended pores, and murmured to the skele-
ton itself. The plaza was empty, the lights infrequent and
remote. So quiet it was that I could hear the faint water in
the fountain. From some distance away came sound, remote
too under the thick low sky — shouting, far-heard, on a thin
female note like all shouting, even a mob of men, broken now
and then by the sound of a band. In the shadow of the wall
Monaghan and Comyn held the German on his feet. He was
unconscious; the three of them invisible save for the faint
blur of the bandage, inaudible save for the steady monotone
of Monaghan's cursing.

"There should never have been an alliance between
Frenchmen and Englishmen," the subadar said. He spoke
without effort; invisible, his effortless voice had an organ
quality, out of all proportion to his size. "Different nations
should never join forces to fight for the same object. Let each
fight for something different; ends that do not conflict, each
in his own way." Sartoris passed us, returning from the foun-
tain, carrying his bulging cap carefully before him, bottom-
up. We could hear the water dripping from it between his
footsteps. He became one of the blob of thicker shadow
where the bandage gleamed and where Monaghan cursed
steadily and quietly. "And each after his own tradition," the
subadar said. "My people. The English gave them rifles. They
looked at them and came to me: 'This spear is too short and
too heavy: how can a man slay a swift enemy with a spear
of this size and weight?' They gave them tunics with buttons
to be kept buttoned; I have passed a whole trench of them
sauatting, motionless, buried to the ears in blankets, straw,

Ad Astra 425

empty sand bags, their faces gray with cold; I have lifted the
blankets away from patient torsos clad only in a shirt.

"The English officers would say to them, 'Go there and do
thus'; they would not stir. Then one day at full noon the
whole battalion, catching movement beyond a crater, sprang
from the trench, carrying me and an officer with it. We
carried the trench without firing a shot; what was left of us —
the officer, I, and seventeen others — lived three days in a
traverse of the enemy's front line; it required a whole brigade
to extricate us. 'Why didn't you shoot? ' the officer said. 'You
let them pick you off like driven pheasant.' They did not
look at him. Like children they stood, murmurous, alert,
without shame. I said to the headman, 'Were the rifles loaded,
O Das?' Like children they stood, diffident, without shame.
'O Son of many kings,' Das said. 'Speak the truth of thy
knowing to the sahib,' I said. 'They were not loaded, sahib,'
Das said."

Again the band came, remote, thudding in the thick air.
They were giving the German drink from a bottle. Mon-
aghan said: "Now. Feel better now?"

"It iss mine head," the German said. They spoke quietly,
like they were discussing wall-paper.

Monaghan cursed again. "I'm going back. By God, I — "

"No, no," the German said. "I will not permit. You haf
already obligated — "

We stood in the shadow beneath the wall and drank. We
had one bottle left. Comyn crashed it, empty, against the
wall.

"Now what?" Bland said.

"Girls," Comyn said. "Would ye watch Comyn of the
Irish nation among the yellow hair of them like a dog among
the wheat?"

We stood there, hearing the far band, the far shouting.
"You sure you feel all right?" Monaghan said.

"Thanks," the German said. "I feel goot."

426 The Wasteland

"Come on, then," Comyn said.

"You going to take him with you?" Bland said.

"Yes," Monaghan said. "What of it?"

"Why not take him on to the A.P.M.? He's sick."

"Do you want me to bash your bloody face in?" Mon-
aghan said.

"All right," Bland said.

"Come on," Comyn said. "What fool would rather fight
than fush? All men are brothers, and all their wives are sis-
ters. So come along, yez midnight fusileers."

"Look here," Bland said to the German, "do you want to
go with them?" With his bandaged head, he and the subadar
alone were visible, like two injured men among five spirits.

"Hold him up a minute," Monaghan told Comyn. Mona-
ghan approached Bland. He cursed Bland. "I like fighting,"
he said, in that same monotone. "I even like being whipped."

"Wait," the German said. "Again I will not permit." Mon-
aghan halted, he and Bland not a foot apart. "I haf wife and
son in Beyreuth," the German said. He was speaking to me,
He gave me the address, twice, carefully.

"I'll write to her," I said. "What shall I tell her?"

"Tell her it iss nothing. You will know."

"Yes. I'll tell her you are all right."

"Tell her this life iss nothing."

Comyn and Monaghan took his arms again, one on either
side. They turned and went on, almost carrying him. Comyn
looked back once. "Peace be with you," he said.

"And with you, peace," the subadar said. They went on.
We watched them come into silhouette in the mouth of an
alley where a light was. There was an arch there, and the
faint cold pale light on the arch and on the walls so that it
was like a gate and they entering the gate, holding the Ger-
man up between them.

"What will they do with him?" Bland said. "Prop him in

Ad Astra 427

the corner and turn the light off? Or do French brothels have
he-beds too?"

"Who the hell's business is that?" I said.

The sound of the band came, thudding; it was cold. Each
time my flesh jerked with alcohol and cold I believed that I
could hear it rasp on the bones.

"Since seven years now I have been in this climate," the
subadar said. "But still I do not like the cold." His voice was
deep, quiet, like he might be six feet tall. It was like when
they made him they said among themselves, "We'll give him
something to carry his message around with." "Why? Who'll
listen to his message?" "He will. So we'll give him something
to hear it with."

"Why dont you go back to India then?" Bland said.

"Ah," the subadar said. "I am like him; I too will not be
baron."

"So you clear out and let foreigners who will treat the
people like oxen or rabbits come in and take it."

"By removing myself I undid in one day what it took two
thousand years to do. Is not that something?"

We shook with the cold. Now the cold was the band, the
shouting, murmuring with cold hands to the skeleton, not
the ears.

"Well," Bland said, "I suppose the English government is
doing more to free your people than you could."

The subadar touched Bland on the chest, lightly. "You are
wise, my friend. Let England be glad that all Englishmen are
not so wise."

"So you will be an exile for the rest of your days, eh?"

The subadar jerked his short, thick arm toward the empty
arch where Comyn and the German and Monaghan had dis-
appeared. "Did you not hear what he said? This life is
nothing."

"You can think so," Bland said. "But, by God, I'd hate to

428 The Wasteland

think that what I saved out of the last three years is nothing."

"You saved a dead man," the subadar said serenely. "You
will see."

"I saved my destiny," Bland said. "You nor nobody else
knows what that will be."

"What is your destiny except to be dead? It is unfortunate
that your generation had to be the one. It is unfortunate that
for the better part of your days you will walk the earth a
spirit. But that was your destiny." From far away came the
shouting, on that sustained note, feminine and childlike all at
once, and then the band again, brassy, thudding, like the
voices, forlornly gay, hysteric, but most of all forlorn. The
arch in the cold glow of the light yawned empty, profound,
silent, like the gate to another city, another world. Suddenly
Sartoris left us. He walked steadily to the wall and leaned
against it on his propped arms, vomiting.

"Hell," Bland said. "I want a drink." He turned to me.
"Where's your bottle?"

"It's gone."

"Gone where? You had two."

"I haven't got one now, though. Drink water."

"Water?" he said. "Who the hell drinks water?"

Then the hot hard ball came into my stomach again, pleas-
ant, unbearable, real; again that instant when you say Now.
Now I can dump everything. "You will, you goddamn son,"
I said.

Bland was not looking at me. "Twice," he said in a quiet,
detached tone. "Twice in an hour. How's that for high?"
He turned and went toward the fountain. Sartoris came back,
walking steadily erect. The band blent with the cold along
the bones.

"What time is it?" I said.

Sartoris peered at his wrist. "Twelfth."

"It's later than midnight," I said. "It must be."

Ad Astra 429

"I said it was the twelfth," Sartoris said.

Bland was stooping at the fountain. There was a little light
there. As we reached him he stood up, mopping at his face.
The light was on his face and I thought for some time that he
must have had his whole head under to be mopping that
high up his face before I saw that he was crying. He stood
there, mopping at his face, crying hard but quiet.

"My poor little wife," he said. "My poor little wife."

Victory

i

THOSE WHO SAW HIM descend from the Marseilles express in
the Gare de Lyon on that damp morning saw a tall man, a
little stiff, with a bronze face and spike-ended moustaches
and almost white hair. "A milord," they said, remarking his
sober, correct suit, his correct stick correctly carried, his
sparse baggage; "a milord military. But there is something
the matter with his eyes." But there was something the mat-
ter with the eyes of so many people, men and women too,
in Europe since four years now. So they watched him go on,
a half head above the French people, with his gaunt, strained
eyes, his air strained, purposeful, and at the same time as-
sured, and vanish into a cab, thinking, if they thought about
him any more at all: "You will see him in the Legation
offices or at a table on the Boulevards, or in a carriage with
the fine English ladies in the Bois." That was all.

And those who saw him descend from the same cab at the
Gare du Nord, they thought: "This milord returns home by
haste"; the porter who took his bag wished him good morn-
ing in fair English and told him that he was going to Eng-
land, receiving for reply the English glare which the porter
perhaps expected, and put him into a first-class carriage of
the boat train. And that was all, too. That was all right, too,
even when he got down at Amiens. English milords even did

43 l

432 The Wasteland

that. It was only at Rozieres that they began to look at him
and after him when he had passed.

In a hired car he jounced through a gutted street between
gutted walls rising undoored and unwindowed in jagged
shards in the dusk. The street was partially blocked now and
then by toppled walls, with masses of masonry in the cracks
of which a thin grass sprouted, passing empty and ruined
courtyards, in one of which a tank, mute and tilted, rusted
among rank weeds. This was Rozieres, but he didn't stop
there because no one lived there and there was no place to
stop.

So the car jounced and crept on out of the ruin. The
muddy and unpaved street entered a village of harsh new
brick and sheet iron and tarred paper roofs made in America,
and halted before the tallest house. It was flush with the
street: a brick wall with a door and one window of Amer-
ican glass bearing the word RESTAURANT. "Here you are, sir,"
the driver said.

The passenger descended, with his bag, his ulster, his cor-
rect stick. He entered a biggish, bare room chill with new
plaster. It contained a billiard table at which three men
played. One of the men looked over his shoulder and said,

"Bonjour, monsieur."

The newcomer did not reply at all. He crossed the room,
passing the new zinc bar, and approached an open door be-
yond which a woman of any age around forty looked at
him above the sewing on her lap.

"Bong jour, madame," he said. "Dormie, madame?"

The woman gave him a single glance, brief, still. "C'est ga,
monsieur," she said, rising.

"Dormie, madame?" he said, raising his voice a little, his
spiked moustache beaded a little with rain, dampness be-
neath his strained yet assured eyes. "Dormie, madame?"

"Bon, monsieur," the woman said. "Bon. Bon."

Victory 433

"Dor — " the newcomer essayed again. Someone touched
his arm. It was the man who had spoken from the billiard
table when he entered.

"Regardez, Monsieur 1'Anglais," the man said. He took
the bag from the newcomer and swept his other arm toward
the ceiling. "La chambre." He touched the traveler again;
he laid his face upon his palm and closed his eyes; he ges-
tured again toward the ceiling and went on across the room
toward a wooden stair without balustrade. As he passed the
bar he took a candle stub from it and lit the candle (the big
room and the room beyond the door where the woman sat
were lighted by single bulbs hanging naked on cords from
the ceiling) at the foot of the stair.

They mounted, thrusting their fitful shadows before them,
into a corridor narrow, chill, and damp as a tomb. The walls
were of rough plaster not yet dried. The floor was of pine,
without carpet or paint. Cheap metal doorknobs glinted sym-
metrically. The sluggish air lay like a hand upon the very
candle. They entered a room, smelling too of wet plaster, and
even colder than the corridor; a sluggish chill almost sub-
stantial, as though the atmosphere between the dead and
recent walls were congealing, like a patent three-minute
dessert. The room contained a bed, a dresser, a chair, a wash-
stand; the bowl, pitcher, and slop basin were of American
enamel. When the traveler touched the bed the linen was
soundless under his hand, coarse as sacking, clinging damply
to the hand in the dead air in which their two breathings
vaporized in the faint candle.

The host set the candle on the dresser. "Diner, monsieur?"
he said. The traveler stared down at the host, incongruous in
his correct clothes, with that strained air. His waxed mous-
taches gleamed like faint bayonets above a cravat stripeG
with what the host could not have known was the patterned
coloring of a Scottish regiment. "Manger?" the host shouted.

434 The Wasteland

He chewed violently in pantomime. "Manger?" he roared,
his shadow aping his gesture as he pointed toward the floor.

"Yes," the traveler shouted in reply, their faces not a yard
apart. "Yes. Yes."

The host nodded violently, pointed toward the floor and
then at the door, nodded again, went out.

He returned below stairs. He found the woman now in
the kitchen, at the stove. "He will eat," the host said.

"I knew that," the woman said.

"You would think that they would stay at home," the host
said. "Fm glad I was not born of a race doomed to a place
too small to hold all of us at one time."

"Perhaps he has come to look at the war," the woman said.

"Of course he has," the host said. "But he should have
come four years ago. That was when we needed Englishmen
to look at the war."

"He was too old to come then," the woman said. "Didn't
you see his hair?"

"Then let him stay at home now," the host said. "He is
no younger."

"He may have come to look at the grave of his son," the
woman said.

"Him?" the host said. "That one? Fie is too cold to ever
have had a son."

"Perhaps you are right," the woman said. "After all, that
is his affair. It is our affair only that he has money."

"That's right," the host said. "A man in this business, he
cannot pick and choose."

"He can pick, though," the woman said.

"Good!" the host said. "Very good! Pick! That is worth
telling to the English himself."

"Why not let him find it out when he leaves?"

"Good!" the host said. "Better still. Good! Oh, good!"

"Attention," the woman said. "Here he comes."

Victory 435

They listened to the traveler's steady tramp, then he ap-
peared in the door. Against the lesser light of the biggei
room, his dark face and his white hair looked like a kodak
negative.

The table was set for two, a carafe of red wine at each
place. As the traveller seated himself, the other guest en-
tered and took the other place — a small, rat-faced man who
appeared at first glance to have no eyelashes at all. He
tucked his napkin into the top of his vest and took up the
soup ladle (the tureen sat between them in the center of the
table) and offered it to the other. "Faites-moi Thonneur,
monsieur," he said. The other bowed stiffly, accepting the
ladle. The small man lifted the cover from the tureen. "Vous
venez examiner ce scene de nos victoires, monsieur?" he said,
helping himself in turn. The other looked at him. "Monsieur
1'Anglais a peut-etre beaucoup des amis qui sont tombes en
voisinage."

"A speak no French," the other said, eating.

The little man did not eat. He held his yet unwetted spoon
above his bowl. "What agreeable for me. I speak the Eng-
leesh. I am Suisse, me. I speak all langue." The other did not
reply. He ate steadily, not fast. "You ave return to see the
grave of your galant countreemans, eh? You ave son here,
perhaps, eh?"

"No," the other said. He did not cease to eat.

"No?" The other finished his soup and set the bowl aside.
He drank some wine. "What deplorable, that man who ave,"
the Swiss said. "But it is finish now. Not?" Again the other
said nothing. He was not looking at the Swiss. He did not
seem to be looking at anything, with his gaunt eyes, his rigid
moustaches upon his rigid face. "Me, I suffer too. All suffer.
But I tell myself, What would you? It is war."

Still the other did not answer. He ate steadily, deliberately,
and finished his meal and rose and left the room. He lit his

43 6 The Wasteland

candle at the bar, where the host, leaning beside a second
man in a corduroy coat, lifted a glass slightly to him. "Au
bon dormir, monsieur," the host said.

The traveler looked at the host, his face gaunt in the
candle, his waxed moustaches rigid, his eyes in shadow.
"What?" he said. "Yes. Yes." He turned and went toward
the stairs. The two men at the bar watched him, his stiff,
deliberate back.

Ever since the train left Arras, the two women had been
watching the other occupant of the carriage. It was a third-
class carriage because no first-class trains ran on this line, and
they sat with their shawled heads and the thick, still hands of
peasants folded upon closed baskets on their laps, watching
the man sitting opposite them — the white distinction of the
hair against the bronze, gaunt face, the needles of the mous-
taches, the foreign-made suit and the stick — on a worn and
greasy wooden seat, looking out the window. At first they
had just looked, ready to avert their gaze, but as the man did
not seem to be aware of them, they began to whisper quietly
to one another behind their hands. But the man did not seem
to notice this, so they soon were talking in undertone, watch-
ing with bright, alert, curious eyes the stiff, incongruous
figure leaning a little forward on the stick, looking out a foul
window beyond which there was nothing to see save an
occasional shattered road and man-high stump of shattered
tree breaking small patches of tilled land whorled with ap-
parent unreason about islands of earth indicated by low
signboards painted red, the islands inscrutable, desolate above
the destruction which they wombed. Then the train, slow-
ing, ran suddenly among tumbled brick, out of which rose
a small house of corrugated iron bearing a name in big letters;
they watched the man lean forward.

"See!" one of the women said. "His mouth. He is reading

Victory 437

the name. What did I tell you? It is as I said. His son fell
here."

"Then he had lots of sons," the other woman said. "He has
read the name each time since we left Arras. Eh! Eh! Him a
son? That cold?"

"They do get children, though."

"That is why they drink whisky. Otherwise . . ."

"That's so. They think of nothing save money and eating,
the English."

Presently they got out; the train went on. Then others
entered the carriage, other peasants with muddy boots,
carrying baskets or live or dead beasts; they in turn watched
the rigid, motionless figure leaning at the window while the
train ran across the ruined land and past the brick or iron
stations among the tumbled ruins, watching his lips move as
he read the names. "Let him look at the war, about which he
has apparently heard at last," they told one another. "Then
he can go home. It was not in his barnyard that it was
fought."

"Nor in his house," a woman said.

II

THE BATTALION stands at ease in the rain. It has been in rest
billets two days, equipment has been replaced and cleaned,
vacancies have been filled and the ranks closed up, and it now
stands at ease with the stupid docility of sheep in the ceaseless
rain, facing the streaming shape of the sergeant-major.

Presently the colonel emerges from a door across the
square. He stands in the door a moment, fastening his trench
coat, then, followed by two A.D.C's, he steps gingerly into
the mud in polished boots and approaches.

"Para-a-a-de — 'Shun!" the sergeant-major shouts. The
battalion clashes, a single muffled, sullen sound. The sergeant-

438 The Wasteland

major turns, takes a pace toward the officers, and salutes, his
stick beneath his armpit. The colonel jerks his stick toward
his cap peak.

"Stand at ease, men," he says. Again the battalion clashes,
a single sluggish, trickling sound. The officers approach the
guide file of the first platoon, the sergeant-major falling in
behind the last officer. The sergeant of the first platoon takes
a pace forward and salutes. The colonel does not respond at
all. The sergeant falls in behind the sergeant-major, and the
five of them pass down the company front, staring in turn
at each rigid, forward-staring face as they pass it. First Com-
pany.

The sergeant salutes the colonel's back and returns to his
original position and comes to attention. The sergeant of the
second company has stepped forward, saluted, is ignored, and
falls in behind the sergeant-major, and they pass down the
second company front. The colonel's trench coat sheathes
water onto his polished boots. Mud from the earth creeps up
his boots and meets the water and is channelled by the water
as the mud creeps up the polished boots again.

Third Company. The colonel stops before a soldier, his
trench coat hunched about his shoulders where the rain
trickles from the back of his cap, so that he looks somehow
like a choleric and outraged bird. The other two officers, the
sergeant-major and the sergeant halt in turn, and the five of
them glare at the five soldiers whom they are facing. The five
soldiers stare rigid and unwinking straight before them, their
faces like wooden faces, their eyes like wooden eyes.

"Sergeant," the colonel says in his pettish voice, "has this
man shaved today?"

"Sir!" the sergeant says in a ringing voice; the sergeant-
major says:

"Did this man shave today, Sergeant?" and all five of them
glare now at the soldier, whose rigid gaze seems to pass

Victory 439

through and beyond them, as if they were not there. "Take
a pace forward when you speak in ranks!" the sergeant-
major says.

The soldier, who has not spoken, steps out of ranks, splash-
ing a jet of mud yet higher up the colonel's boots.

"What is your name?" the colonel says.

"024 1 86. Gray," the soldier raps out glibly. The company,
the battalion, stares straight ahead.

"Sir!" the sergeant-major thunders.

"Sir-r," the soldier says.

"Did you shave this morning?" the colonel says.

"Nae, sir-r."

"Why not?"

"A dinna shave, sir-r."

"You dont shave?"

"A am nae auld enough tae shave."

"Sir!" the sergeant-major thunders.

"Sir-r," the soldier says.

"You are not . . ." The colonel's voice dies somewhere
behind his choleric glare, the trickling water from his cap
peak. "Take his name, Sergeant-major," he says, passing on.

The battalion stares rigidly ahead. Presently it sees the
colonel, the two officers and the sergeant-major reappear in
single file. At the proper place the sergeant-major halts and
salutes the colonel's back. The colonel jerks his stick hand
again and goes on, followed by the two officers, at a trot
toward the door from which he had emerged.

The sergeant-major faces the battalion again. "Para-a-a-
de — " he shouts. An indistinguishable movement passes from
rank to rank, an indistinguishable precursor of that damp arid
sullen clash which dies borning. The sergeant-major's stick
has come down from his armpit; he now leans on it, as officers
do. For a time his eye roves along the battalion front.

"Sergeant Cunninghame!" he says at last.

440 The Wasteland

"Sir!"

"Did you take that man's name?"

There is silence for a moment — a little more than a short
moment, a little less than a long one. Then the sergeant says:
"What man, sir?"

"You, soldier!" the sergeant-major says.

The battalion stands rigid. The rain lances quietly into the
mud between it and the sergeant-major as though it were
too spent to either hurry or cease.

"You soldier that dont shave!" the sergeant-major says.

"Gray, sir! " the sergeant says.

"Gray. Double out 'ere."

The man Gray appears without haste and tramps stolidly
before the battalion, his kilts dark and damp and heavy as a
wet horse-blanket. He halts, facing the sergeant-major.

"Why didn't you shave this morning?" the sergeant-major
says.

"A am nae auld enough tae shave," Gray says.

"Sir!" the sergeant-major says.

Gray stares rigidly beyond the sergeant-major's shoulder.

"Say sir when addressing a first-class warrant officer!" the
sergeant-major says. Gray stares doggedly past his shoulder,
his face beneath his vizorless bonnet as oblivious of the cold
lances of rain as though it were granite. The sergeant-major
raises his voice:

"Sergeant Cunninghame!"

"Sir!"

"Take this man's name for insubordination also."

"Very good, sir! "

The sergeant-major looks at Gray again. "And I'll see that
you get the penal battalion, my man. Fall in!"

Gray turns without haste and returns to his place in ranks,
the sergeant-major watching him. The sergeant-major raises
his voice again:

Victory 441

"Sergeant Cunninghame!"

"Sir!"

"You did not take that man's name when ordered. Let that
happen again and you'll be for it yourself."

"Very good, sir!"

"Carry on!" the sergeant-major says.

"But why did ye no shave?" the corporal asked him. They
were back in billets: a stone barn with leprous walls, where
no light entered, squatting in the ammoniac air on wet straw
about a reeking brazier. "Ye kenned we were for inspection
thae mor-rn."

"A am nae auld enough tae shave," Gray said.

"But ye kenned thae colonel would mar-rk ye on parade."

"A am nae auld enough tae shave," Gray repeated dog-
gedly and without heat.

Ill

"FOR TWO HUNDRED YEARS," Matthew Gray said, "there's
never a day, except Sunday, has passed but there is a hull
rising on Clyde or a hull going out of Clydemouth with a
Gray-driven nail in it." He looked at young Alec across his
steel spectacles, his neck bowed. "And not excepting their
godless Sabbath hammering and sawing either. Because if a
hull could be built in a day, Grays could build it," he added
with dour pride. "And now, when you are big enough to
go down to the yards with your grandadder and me and
take a man's place among men, to be trusted manlike with
hammer and saw yersel."

"Whisht, Matthew," old Alec said. "The lad can saw as
straight a line and drive as mony a nail a day as yersel or
even me."

Matthew paid his father no attention. He continued to
speak his slow, considered words, watching his oldest son

442 The Wasteland

across the spectacles. "And with John Wesley not old
enough by two years, and wee Matthew by ten, and your
grandfather an auld man will soon be — "

"Whisht," old Alec said. "I'm no but sixty-eight. Will you
be telling the lad he'll make his bit journey to London and
come back to find me in the parish house, mayhap? 'Twill
be over by Christmastide."

"Christmasride or no," Matthew said, "a Gray, a ship-
wright, has no business at an English war."

"Whisht ye," old Alec said. He rose and went to the chim-
ney cupboard and returned, carrying a box. It was of wood,
dark and polished with age, the corners bound with iron, and
fitted with an enormous iron lock which any child with a
hairpin could have solved. From his pocket he took an iron
key almost as big as the lock. He opened the box and lifted
carefully out a small velvet-covered jeweler's box and opened
it in turn. On the satin lining lay a medal, a bit of bronze on
a crimson ribbon: a Victoria Cross. "I kept the hulls going out
of Clydemouth while your uncle Simon was getting this bit
of brass from the Queen," old Alec said. "I heard naught of
complaint. And if need be, I'll keep them going out while
Alec serves the Queen a bit himsel. Let the lad go," he said.
He put the medal back into the wooden box and locked it.
"A bit fighting winna hurt the lad. If I were his age, or yours
either, for that matter, I'd gang mysel. Alec, lad, hark ye.
Ye'll see if they'll no take a hale lad of sixty-eight and I'll
gang wi ye and leave the auld folk like Matthew to do the
best they can. Nay, Matthew; dinna ye thwart the lad; have
no the Grays ever served the Queen in her need?"

So young Alec went to enlist, descending the hill on a
weekday in his Sunday clothes, with a New Testament and
a loaf of homebaked bread tied in a handkerchief. And this
was the last day's work which old Alec ever did, for soon
after that, one morning Matthew descended the hill to the

Victory 443

shipyard alone, leaving old Alec at home. And after that, on
the sunny days (and sometimes on the bad days too, until his
daughter-in-law found him and drove him back into the
house) he would sit shawled in a chair on the porch, gazing
south and eastward, calling now and then to his son's wife
within the house: "Hark now. Do you hear them? The
guns."

"I hear nothing,'7 the daughter-in-law would say. "It's only
the sea at Kinkeadbight. Come into the house, now. Matthew
will be displeased."

"Whisht, woman. Do you think there is a Gray in the
world could let off a gun and me not know the sound of it?"

They had a letter from him shortly after he enlisted, from
England, in which he said that being a soldier, England, was
different from being a shipwright, Clydeside, and that he
would write again later. Which he did, each month or so,
writing that soldiering was different from building ships and
that it was still raining. Then they did not hear from him for
seven months. But his mother and father continued to write
him a joint letter on the first Monday of each month, letters
almost identical with the previous one, the previous dozen:

We are well. Ships are going out of Clyde faster than they
can sink them. You still have the Book?

This would be in his father's slow, indomitable hand. Then,
in his mother's:

Are you 'well? Do you need anything? Jessie and I are knit-
ting the stockings and will send them. Alec, Alec.

He received this one during the seven months, during his
term in the penal battalion, forwarded to him by his old
corporal, since he had not told his people of his changed life.
He answered it, huddled among his fellow felons, squatting

444 The Wastelana

in the mud with newspapers buttoned inside his tunic and
his head and feet wrapped in strips of torn blanket:

/ am 'well. Yes I still have the Book (not telling them that his
platoon was using it to light tobacco with and that they were
now well beyond Lamentations). It still rains. Love to Gran-
dadder and Jessie and Matthew and John Wesley.

Then his time in the penal battalion was up. He returned
to his old company, his old platoon, finding some new faces,
and a letter:

We are 'well. Ships are going out of Clyde yet. You have a
new sister. Your Mother is well.

He folded the letter and put it away. "A see mony new
faces in thae battalion," he said to the corporal. "We ha a
new sair-rgeant-major too, A doot not?"

"Naw," the corporal said. " 'Tis the same one." He was
looking at Gray, his gaze intent, speculative; his face cleared.
"Ye ha shaved thae mor-rn," he said.

"Ay," Gray said. "Am auld enough tae shave noo."

That was the night on which the battalion was to go up to
Arras. It was to move at midnight, so he answered the letter
at once:

/ am well. Love to Grandadder and Jessie and Matthew and
John Wesley and the baby.

"Morning! Morning!" The General, lap-robed and
hooded, leans from his motor and waves his gloved hand and
shouts cheerily to them as they slog past the car on the
Bapaume road, taking the ditch to pass.

"A's a cheery auld card," a voice says.

"Awfficers," a second drawls; he falls to cursing as he slips
in the greaselike mud, trying to cling to the crest of the
kneedeep ditch.

Victory 445

"Aweel," a third says, "thae awfficers wud gang tae thae
war-r too, A doot not."

"Why dinna they gang then?" a fourth says. "Thae war-r
is no back that way."

Platoon by platoon they slip and plunge into the ditch and
drag their heavy feet out of the clinging mud and pass the
halted car and crawl terrifically onto the crown of the road
again: "A says tae me, a says: 'Fritz has a new gun that will
carry to Par-ris,' a says, and A says tae him: * 'Tis nawthin:
a has one that will hit our Cor-rps Headquar-rters.' "

"Morning! Morning!" The General continues to wave
his glove and shout cheerily as the battalion detours into the
ditch and heaves itself back onto the road again.

They are in the trench. Until the first rifle explodes in their
faces, not a shot has been fired. Gray is the third man. Dur-
ing all the while that they crept between flares from shell-
hole to shellhole, he has been working himself nearer to the
sergeant-major and the Officer; in the glare of that first rifle
he can see the gap in the wire toward which the Officer was
leading them, the moiled rigid glints of the wire where bul-
lets have nicked the mud and rust from it, and against the
glare the tall, leaping shape of the sergeant-major. Then
Gray, too, springs bayonet first into the trench full of grunt-
ing shouts and thudding blows.

Flares go up by dozens now, in the corpse glare Gray sees
the sergeant-major methodically tossing grenades into the
next traverse. He runs toward him, passing the Officer lean-
ing, bent double, against the fire step. The sergeant-major
has vanished beyond the traverse. Gray follows and comes
upon the sergeant-major. Holding the burlap curtain aside
with one hand, the sergeant-major is in the act of tossing a
grenade into a dugout as if he might be tossing an orange
hull into a cellar.

446 The Wasteland

The sergeant-major turns in the rocket glare. " 'Tis you,
Gray," he says. The earth-muffled bomb thuds; the sergeant-
major is in the act of catching another bomb from the sack
about his neck as Gray's bayonet goes into his throat. The
sergeant-major is a big man. He falls backward, holding the
rifle barrel v/ith both hands against his throat, his teeth glar-
ing, pulling Gray with him. Gray clings to the rifle. He tries
to shake the speared body on the bayonet as he would shake
a rat on an umbrella rib.

He frees the bayonet. The sergeant-major falls. Gray
reverses the rifle and hammers its butt into the sergeant-
major's face, but the trench floor is too soft to supply any
resistance. He glares about. His gaze falls upon a duckboard
upended in the mud. He drags it free and slips it beneath the
sergeant-major's head and hammers the face with his rifle-
butt. Behind him in the first traverse the Officer is shouting:
•'Blow your whistle, Sergeant-major!"

IV

IN THE CITATION it told how Private Gray, on a night raid,
one of four survivors, following the disablement of the
Officer and the death of all the N.C.O.'s, took command of
the situation and (the purpose of the expedition was a quick
raid for prisoners) ; held a foothold in the enemy's front line
until a supporting attack arrived and consolidated the posi-
tion. The Officer told how he ordered the men back out,
ordering them to leave him and save themselves, and how
Gray appeared with a German machine gun from somewhere
and, while his three companions built a barricade, overcame
the Officer and took from him his Very pistol and fired the
colored signal which called for the attack; all so quickly that
support arrived before the enemy could counterattack or put
down a barrage.

Victory 447

It is doubtful if his people ever saw the citation at all. Any-
way, the letters which he received from them during his
sojourn in hospital, the tenor of them, were unchanged: "We
are well. Ships are still going out."

His next letter home was once more months late. He wrote
it when he was sitting up again, in London:

/ have been sick but I am better noiv. I have a ribbon like in
the box but not all red. The Queen ivas there. Love to Gran-
dadder and Jessie and Mattheiv and John Wesley and the
baby.

The reply was written on Friday:

Your mother is glad that you are better. Your grandfather is
dead. The baby's name is Elizabeth. We are well. Your
mother sends her love.

His next letter was three months later, in winter again:

My hurt is well. 1 am going to a school for officers. Love to
Jessie and Matthew and John Wesley and Elizabeth.

Matthew Gray pondered over this letter for a long while;
so long that the reply was a week late, written on the second
Monday instead of the first. He wrote it carefully, waiting
until his family was in bed. It was such a long letter, or he
had been at it so long, that after a time his wife came into the
room in her nightdress.

"Go back to bed," he told her. "I'll be coming soon. 'Tis
something to be said to the lad."

When at last he laid the pen down and sat back to reread
the letter, it was a long one, written out slowly and deliber-
ately and without retraction or blot:

. . . your bit ribbon . . . for that way lies vainglory and pride.
The pride and vainglory of going for an officer. Never mis-

448 The Wasteland

call your birth, Alec. You are not a gentleman. You are a
Scottish shipwright. If your grandfather 'were here he would
not be last to tell you so. . . . We are glad your hurt is well.
Your mother sends her love.

He sent home the medal, and his photograph in the new
tunic with the pips and ribbon and the barred cuffs. But he
did not go home himself. He returned to Flanders in the
spring, with poppies blowing in the churned beet- and cab-
bage-fields. When his leaves came, he spent them in London,
in the haunts of officers, not telling his people that he had
any leave.

He still had the Book. Occasionally he came upon it among
his effects and opened it at the jagged page where his life
had changed: . . . and a voice said, Peter, raise thyself; kill —

Often his batman would watch him as, unawares and ob-
livious, he turned the Book and mused upon the jagged page
— the ranker, the gaunt, lonely man with a face that belied
his years or lack of them: a sobriety, a profound and mature
calm, a grave and deliberate conviction of expression and
gesture ("like a mout be Haig hissel," the batman said) —
watching him at his clean table, writing steadily and slowly,
his tongue in his cheek as a child writes:

/ am well. It has not rained in a fortnight. Love to Jessie and
Matthew and John Wesley and Elizabeth.

Four days ago the battalion came down from the lines. It
has lost its major and two captains and most of the subalterns,
so that now the remaining captain is major, and two sub-
alterns and a sergeant have the companies. Meanwhile, re-
placements have come up, the ranks are filled, and the
battalion is going in again tomorrow. So today K Company
stands with ranks open for inspection while the subaltern-
captain (his name is Gray) moves slowly along each platoon
front.

Victory 449

He passes from man to man, slowly, thoroughly, the ser-
geant behind him. He stops.

"Where is your trenching tool?" he says.

"Blawn — " the soldier begins. Then he ceases, staring
rigidly before him.

"Blawn out of your pack, eh?" the captain finishes for
him. "Since when? What battles have ye taken par-rt in
since four days?"

The soldier stares rigidly across the drowsy street. The
captain moves on. "Take his name, Sergeant."

He moves on to the second platoon, to the third. He halts
again. He looks the soldier up and down.

"What is your name?"

"010801 McLan, sir-r."

"Replacement?"

"Replacement, sir-r."

The captain moves on. "Take his name, Sergeant. Rifle's
filthy."

The sun is setting. The village rises in black silhouette
against the sunset; the river gleams in mirrored fire. The
bridge across the river is a black arch upon which slowly and
like figures cut from black paper, men are moving.

The party crouches in the roadside ditch while the captain
and the sergeant peer cautiously across the parapet of the
road. "Do ye make them out?" the captain says in a low
voice.

"Huns, sir-r," the sergeant whispers. "A ken their-r hel-
mets."

Presently the column has crossed the bridge. The captain
and the sergeant crawl back into the ditch, where the party
crouches, among them a wounded man with a bandaged head.
"Keep yon man quiet, now," the captain says.

He leads the way along the ditch until they reach the out-

450 The Wasteland

skirts of the village. Here they are out of the sun, and here
they sit quietly beneath a wall, surrounding the wounded
man, while the captain and the sergeant again crawl away.
They return in five minutes. "Fix bayonets," the sergeant
says in a low voice. "Quiet, now."

"Wull A stay wi thae hur-rt lad, Sair-rgent?" one whispers,

"Nay," the sergeant says. "A'll tak's chance wi us. For-
rard."

They steal quietly along the wall, behind the captain. The
wall approaches at right angles to the street, the road which
crosses the bridge. The captain raises his hand. They halt
and watch him as he peers around the corner. They are op-
posite the bridgehead. It and the road are deserted; the village
dreams quietly in the setting sun. Against the sky beyond the
village the dust of the retreating column hangs, turning to
rose and gold.

Then they hear a sound, a short, guttural word. Not ten
yards away and behind a ruined wall leveled breast-high and
facing the bridge, four men squat about a machine gun. The
captain raises his hand again. They grasp their rifles: a rush
of hobnails on cobblestones, a cry of astonishment cut sharply
off; blows, short, hard breaths, curses; not a shot.

The man with the bandaged head begins to laugh, shrilly,
until someone hushes him with a hand that tastes like brass»
Under the captain's direction they bash in the door of the
house and drag the gun and the four bodies into it. They
hoist the gun upstairs and set it up in a window looking down
upon the bridgehead. The sun sinks further, the shadows fall
long and quiet across village and river. The man with the
bandaged head babbles to himself.

Another column swings up the road, dogged and orderly
beneath coalhod helmets. It crosses the bridge and passes on
through the village. A party detaches itself from the rear of
the column and splits into three squads. Two of them have

Victory 45 1

machine guns, which they set up on opposite sides of the
street, the near one utilizing the barricade behind which the
other gun had been captured. The third squad returns to the
bridge, carrying sappers' tools and explosive. The sergeant
tells off six of the nineteen men, who descend the stairs
silently. The captain remains with the gun in the window.

Again there is a brief rush, a scuffle, blows. From the win-
dow the captain sees the heads of the machine-gun crew
across the street turn, then the muzzle of the gun swings,
firing. The captain rakes them once with his gun, then he
sweeps with it the party on the bridge, watching it break
like a covey of quail for the nearest wall. The captain holds
the gun on them. They wilt running and dot the white road
and become motionless. Then he swings the gun back to the
gun across the street. It ceases.

He gives another order. The remaining men, except the
man with the bandage, run down the stairs. Half of them
3top at the gun beneath the window and drag it around. The
others dash on across the street, toward the second gun.
They are halfway across when the other gun rattles. The
running men plunge as one in midstep. Their kilts whip for-
ward and bare their pale thighs. The gun rakes across the
doorway where the others are freeing the first gun of bodies.
As the captain sweeps his gun down again, dust puffs from
the left side of the window, his gun rings metallically, some-
thing sears along his arm and across his ribs, dust puffs from
the right side of the window. He rakes the other gun again.
It ceases. He continues to fire into the huddled clump about
it long after the gun has ceased.

The dark earth bites into the sun's rim. The street is now
all in shadow; a final level ray comes into the room, and fades.
Behind him in the twilight the wounded man laughs, then
his laughter sinks into a quiet contented gibberish.

Just before dark another column crosses the bridge. There

452 The Wasteland

is still enough light for it to be seen that these troops wear
khaki and that their helmets are flat. But likely there is no
one to see, because when a par^y mounted to the second
story and found the captain propped in the window beside
the cold gun, they thought that he was dead.

This time Matthew Gray saw the citation. Someone
clipped it from the Gazette and sent it to him, and he sent it
in turn to his son in the hospital, with a letter:

. . . Since you must go to a 'war we are glad that you are
doing well in it. Your mother thinks that you have done your
part and that you should come home. But women do not
understand such things. But I myself think that it is time
they stopped fighting. What is the good in the high wages
when food is so high that there is profit -for none save the
profiteers. When a war gets to where the battles do not even
prosper the people who win them, it is time to stop.

V

IN THE BED NEXT HIS, and later in the chair next his on the
long glassed veranda, there was a subaltern. They used to
talk. Or rather, the subaltern talked while Gray listened. He
talked of peace, of what he would do when it was over, talk-
ing as if it were about finished, as if it would not last past
Christmas.

"We'll be back out there by Christmas," Gray said.

"Gas cases? They don't send gas cases out again. They
have to be cured."

"We will be cured."

"But not in time. It will be over by Christmas. It can't
last another year. You don't believe me, do you? Sometimes
I believe you want to go back. But it will be. It will be fin-
ished by Christmas, and then I'm off, Canada. Nothing at

Victory 453

home for us now." He looked at the other, at the gaunt,
wasted figure with almost white hair, lying with closed eyes
in the fall sunlight. "You'd better come with me."

"I'll meet you in Givenchy on Christmas Day," Gray said.

But he didn't. He was in the hospital on the eleventh of
November, hearing the bells, and he was still there on Christ-
mas Day, where he received a letter from home:

You can come on home now. It 'will not be too soon now.
They will need ships worse than ever now, now that the
pride and the vainglory have worn themselves out.

The medical officer greeted him cheerfully. "Dammit,
stuck here, when I know a place in Devon where I could
hear a nightingale, by jove." He thumped Gray's chest. "Not
much: just a bit of a murmur. Give you no trouble, if you'll
stop away from wars from now on. Might keep you from
getting in again, though." He waited for Gray to laugh, but
Gray didn't laugh. "Well, it's all finished now, damn them.
Sign here, will you." Gray signed. "Forget it as quickly as
it began, I hope. Well — " He extended his hand, smiling his
antiseptic smile. "Cheer-O, Captain. And good luck."

Matthew Gray, descending the hill at seven oclock in the
morning, saw the man, the tall, hospital-colored man in city
clothing and carrying a stick, and stopped.

"Alec?" he said. "Alec." They shook hands. "I could not—
I did not . . ." He looked at his son, at the white hair, the
waxed moustaches. "You have two ribbons now for the box,
you have written." Then Matthew turned back up the hill at
seven oclock in the morning. "We'll go to your mother."

Then Alec Gray reverted for an instant. Perhaps he had
not progressed as far as he thought, or perhaps he had been
climbing a hill, and the return was not a reversion so much

454 The Wasteland

as something like an avalanche waiting the pebble, momen-
tary though it was to be. "The shipyard, Father."

His father strode firmly on, carrying his lunchpail. " 'Twill
wait," he said. "We'll go to your mother."

His mother met him at the door. Behind her he saw young
Matthew, a man now, and John Wesley, and Elizabeth whom
he had never seen. "You did not wear your uniform home,"
young Matthew said.

"No/ he said. "No, I—"

"Your mother had wanted to see you in your regimentals
and all," his father said.

"No," his mother said. "No! Never! Never!"

"Hush, Annie/ ' his father said. "Being a captain now, with
two ribbons now for the box. This is false modesty. Ye hae
shown course; ye should have — But 'tis of no moment: the
proper unifor - for a Gray is an overall and a hammer."

"Ay, sir," Alec said, who had long since found out that
no man has courage but that any man may blunder blindly
into valor as one stumbles into an open manhole in the street.

He did not tell his father until that night, after his mother
and the children had gone to bed. "I am going back to Eng-
land. I have work promised there."

"Ah," his father said. "At Bristol, perhaps? They build
ships there."

The lamp glowed, touching with faint gleams the black
and polished surface of the box on the mantel-shelf. There
was a wind getting up, hollowing out the sky like a dark
bowl, carving house and hill and headland out of dark space.
" 'Twill be blowing out yon the night," his father said.

"There are other things," Alec said. "I have made friends,
you see."

His father removed the iron-rimmed spectacles. "You have
made friends. Officers and such, I doubt not?"

Victory 455

"Yes, sir."

"And friends are good to have, to sit about the hearth of
nights and talk with. But beyond that, only them that love
you will bear your faults. You must love a man well to put
up with all his trying ways, Alec."

"But they are not that sort of friends, sir. They are . . ."
He ceased. He did not look at his father. Matthew sat, slowly
polishing the spectacles with his thumb. They could hear the
wind. "If this fails, I'll come back to the shipyard."

His father watched him gravely, polishing the spectacles
slowly. "Ship wrights are not made like that, Alec. To fear
God, to do your work like it was your own hull you were
putting the ribs in . . ." He moved. "We'll see what the Book
will say." He replaced the glasses. On the table was a heavy,
brass-bound Bible. He opened it; the words seemed to him
to rise to meet him from the page. Yet he read them, aloud:
". . . and the captains of thousands and the captains of ten
thousands ... A paragraph of pride. He faced his son, bowing
his neck to see across the glasses. "You will go to London,
then?"

"Yes, sir," Alec said.

VI

His POSITION WAS WAITING. It was in an office. He had already
had cards made: Captain A. Gray, M.C., D.S.M., and on
his return to London he joined the Officers' Association,
donating to the support of the widows and orphans.

He had rooms in the proper quarter, and he would walk
to and from the office, with his cards and his waxed mous-
taches, his sober correct clothes and his stick carried in a
manner inimitable, at once jaunty and unobtrusive, giving
his coppers to blind and maimed in Piccadilly, asking of them
the names of their regiments. Once a month he wrote home:

456 The Wasteland

I am 'well. Love to Jessie and Matthew and John Wesley and
Elizabeth.

During that first year Jessie was married. He sent her a
gift of plate, stinting himself a little to do so, drawings from
his savings. He was saving, not against old age; he believed
too firmly in the Empire to do that, who had surrendered
completely to the Empire like a woman, a bride. He was
saving against the time when he would recross the Channel
among the dead scenes of his lost and found life.

That was three years later. He was already planning to
ask for leave, when one day the manager broached the sub-
ject himself. With one correct bag he went to France. But
he did not bear eastward at once. He went to the Riviera;
for a week he lived like a gentleman, spending his money
like a gentleman, lonely, alone in that bright aviary of the
svelte kept women of all Europe.

That was why those who saw him descend from the Medi-
terranean Express that morning in Paris said, "Here is a
rich milord," and why they continued to say it in the hard-
benched third-class trains, as he sat leaning forward on his
stick, lip-moving the names on sheet-iron stations about the
battered and waking land lying now three years quiet be-
neath the senseless and unbroken battalions of days.

He reached London and found what he should have known
before he left. His position was gone. Conditions, the man-
ager told him, addressing him punctiliously by his rank.

What savings he had left melted slowly; he spent the last
of them on a black silk dress for his mother, with the letter:

/ ant 'well. Love to Matthew and John Wesley and Elizabeth.

He called upon his friends, upon the officers whom he had
known. One, the man he knew best, gave him whisky in a
comfortable room with a fire: "You aren't working now?

Victory 457

Rotten luck. By the way, you remember Whiteby? He had
a company in the — th. Nice chap: no people, though. He
killed himself last week. Conditions."

"Oh. Did he? Yes. I remember him. Rotten luck."

"Yes. Rotten luck. Nice chap."

He no longer gave his pennies to the blind and the maimed
in Piccadilly. He needed them for papers:

Artisans needed

Become stonemason

Men to drive ?no tor cars. War record not necessary

Shop-assistants (must be under twenty -one)

Shipwrights needed

and at last:

Gentleman ivith social address and connections to meet out-
of-toivn clients. Temporary

He got the place, and with his waxed moustaches and his
correct clothes he revealed the fleshpots of the West End
to Birmingham and Leeds. It was temporary.

Artisans
Carpenters
House pain ters

Winter was temporary, too. In the spring he took his
waxed moustaches and his ironed clothes into Surrey, with
a set of books, an encyclopedia, on commission. He sold all
his things save what he stood in, and gave up his rooms in
town.

He still had his stick, his waxed moustaches, his cards.
Surrey, gentle, green, mild. A tight little house in a tight
little garden. An oldish man in a smoking jacket puttering
in a flower bed: "Good day, sir. Might I — "

The man in the smoking jacket looks up. "Go to the side,
can't you? Don't come this way."

458 The Wasteland

He goes to the side entrance. A slatted gate, freshly white,
bearing an enameled plate:

^Tx^ HAWKERS
NO

BEGGARS

He passes through and knocks at a tidy door smug beneath
a vine. "Good day, miss. May I see the — "

"Go away. Didn't you see the sign on the gate?"

"But I—"

"Go away, or I'll call the master."

In the fall he returned to London. Perhaps he could not
have said why himself. Perhaps it was beyond any saying,
instinct perhaps bringing him back to be present at the in-
stant out of all time of the manifestation, apotheosis, of his
life which had died again. Anyway, he was there, still with
his waxed moustaches, erect, his stick clasped beneath his
left armpit, among the Household troops in brass cuirasses,
on dappled geldings, and Guards in scarlet tunics, and the
Church militant in stole and surplice and Prince defenders
of God in humble mufti, all at attention for two minutes,
listening to despair. He still had thirty shillings, and he re-
plenished his cards: Captain A. Gray, M.C., D.S.M.

It is one of those spurious, pale days like a sickly and
premature child of spring while spring itself is still weeks
away. In the thin sunlight buildings fade upward into misty
pinks and golds. Women wear violets pinned to their furs,
appearing to bloom themselves like flowers in the languorous,
treacherous air.

It is the women who look twice at the man standing against
the wall at a corner: a gaunt man with white hair, and
moustaches twisted into frayed points, with a bleached and
frayed regimental scarf in a celluloid collar, a once-good
suit now threadbare yet apparently pressed within twenty-

Victory 459

four hours, standing against the wall with closed eyes, a
dilapidated hat held bottom-up before him.

He stood there for a long time, until someone touched his
arm. It was a constable. "Move along, sir. Against orders."
In his hat were seven pennies and three halfpence. He
bought a cake of soap and a little food.

Another anniversary came and passed; he stood again, his
stick at his armpit, among the bright, silent uniforms, the
quiet throng in either frank or stubborn cast-offs, with
patient, bewildered faces. In his eyes now is not that hopeful
resignation of a beggar, but rather that bitterness, that echo
as of bitter and unheard laugher of a hunchback.

A meager fire burns on the sloping cobbles. In the fitful
light the damp, fungus-grown wall of the embankment and
the stone arch of the bridge loom. At the foot of the cobbled
slope the invisible river clucks and gurgles with the tide.

Five figures lie about the fire, some with heads covered
as though in slumber, others smoking and talking. One man
sits upright, his back to the wall, his hands lying beside him;
he is blind: he sleeps that way. He says that he is afraid to
lie down.

"Cant you tell you are lying down, without seeing you
are?" another says.

"Something might happen," the blind man says.

"What? Do you think they would give you a shell, even
if it would bring back your sight?"

"They'd give him the shell, all right," a third said.

"Ow. Why dont they line us all up and put down a bloody
barrage on us?"

"Was that how he lost his sight?" a fourth says. "A shell?"

"Ow. He was at Mons. A dispatch rider, on a motorbike.
Tell them about it, mate."

The blind man lifts his face a little. Otherwise he does not

460 The Wasteland

move. He speaks in a flat voice. "She had the bit of scar on
her wrist. That was how I could tell. It was me put the scar
on her wrist, you might say. We was working in the shop
one day. I had picked up an old engine and we was fitting it
onto a bike so we could — "

"What?" the fourth says. "What's he talking about?"

"Shhhh," the first says. "Not so loud. He's talking about
his girl. He had a bit of a bike shop on the Brighton Road
and they were going to marry." He speaks in a low tone, his
voice just under the weary, monotonous voice of the blind
man. "Had their picture taken and all the day he enlisted
and got his uniform. He had it with hii for a while, until one
day he lost it. He was fair wild. So at last we got a bit of a
card about the same size of the picture. 'Here's your picture,
mate/ we says. 'Hold onto it this time.' So he's still got the
card. Likely he'll show it to you before he's done. So dont
you let on."

"No," the other says. "I shant let on."

The blind man talks. " — got them at the hospital to write
her a letter, and sure enough, here she come. I could tell her
by the bit of scar on her wrist. Her voice sounded different,
but then everything sounded different since. But I could tell
by the scar. We would sit and hold hands, and I could touch
the bit of scar inside her left wrist. In the cinema too. I
would touch the scar and it would be like I — "

"The cinema?" the fourth says. "Him?"

"Yes," the other says. "She would take him to the cinema,
the comedies, so he could hear them laughing."

The blind man talks. " — told me how the pictures hurt
her eyes, and that she would leave me at the cinema and
when it was over she would come and fetch me. So I said it
was all right. And the next night it was again. And I said it
was all right. And the next night I told her I wouldn't go
either. I said we would stop at home, at the hospital. And

Victory 461

then she didn't say anything for a long while. I could hear
her breathing. Then she said it was all right. So after that we
didn't go to the cinema. We would just sit, holding hands,
and me feeling the scar now and then. We couldn't talk loud
in the hospital, so we would whisper. But mostly we didn't
talk. We just held hands. And that was for eight nights. I
counted. Then it was the eighth night. We were sitting
there, with the other hand in my hand, and me touching the
scar now and then. Then on a sudden the hand jerked away.
I could hear her standing up. 'Listen,' she says. 'This cant go
on any longer. You will have to know sometime,' she says.
And I says, 'I dont want to know but one thing. What is
your name?' I says. She told me her name; one of the nurses.
And she says — "

"What?" the fourth says. "What is this?"

"He told you," the first said. "It was one of the nurses in
the hospital. The girl had been buggering off with another
fellow and left the nurse for him to hold her hand, thinking
he was fooled."

"But how did he know?" the fourth says.

"Listen," the first says.

" — 'and you knew all the time/ she says, 'since the first
time?' 'It was the scar,' I says. 'You've got it on the wrong
wrist. You've got it on your right wrist,' I says. 'And two
nights ago, I lifted up the edge of it a bit. What is it,' I says.
'Courtplaster? ' " The blind man sits against the wall, his face
lifted a little, his hands motionless beside him. "That's how
I knew, by the scar. Thinking they could fool me, when it
was me put the scar on her, you might say — "

The prone figure farthest from the fire lifts its head.
"Hup," he says; "ere e comes."

The others turn as one and look toward the entrance.

"Here who comes?" the blind man says. "Is it the bob-
bies?"

462 The Wasteland

They do not answer. They watch the man who enters:
a tall man with a stick. They cease to talk, save the blind
man, watching the tall man come among them. "Here who
comes, mates?" the blind man says. "Mates!"

The newcomer passes them, and the fire; he does not look
at them. He goes on. "Watch, now," the second says. The
blind man is now leaning a little forward; his hands fumble
at the ground beside him as though he were preparing to
rise.

"Watch who?" he says. "What do you see?"

They do not answer. They are watching the newcomer
covertly, attentively, as he disrobes and then, a white
shadow, a ghostly gleam in the darkness, goes down to the
water and washes himself, slapping his body hard with icy
and filthy handfuls of river water. He returns to the fire;
they turn their faces quickly aside, save the blind man (he
still sits forward, his arms propped beside him as though on
the point of rising, his wan face turned toward the sound,
the movement) and one other. "Yer stones is ot, sir," this
one says. "I've ad them right in the blaze."

"Thanks," the newcomer says. He still appears to be
utterly oblivious of them, so they watch him again, quietly,
as he spreads his sorry garments on one stone and takes a
second stone from the fire and irons them. While he is
dressing, the man who spoke to him goes down to the water
and returns with the cake of soap which he had used. Still
watching, they see the newcomer rub his fingers on the cake
of soap and twist his moustaches into points.

"A bit more on the left one, sir," the man holding the
soap says. The newcomer soaps his fingers and twists his left
moustache again, the other man watching him, his head bent
and tilted a little back, in shape and attitude and dress like
a caricatured scarecrow.

"Right, now?" the newcomer says.

Victory 463

"Right, sir," the scarecrow says. He retreats into the dark-
ness and returns without the cake of soap, and carrying in-
stead the hat and the stick. The newcomer takes them. From
his pocket he takes a coin and puts it into the scarecrow's
hand. The scarecrow touches his cap; the newcomer is gone.
They watch him, the tall shape, the erect back, the stick,
until he disappears.

"What do you see, mates?" the blind man says. "Tell a
man what you see."

VII

AMONG THE DEMOBILIZED officers who emigrated from Eng-
land after the Armistice was a subaltern named Walkley. He
went out to Canada, where he raised wheat and prospered,
both in pocket and in health. So much so that, had he been
walking out of the Gare de Lyon in Paris instead of in Pic-
cadilly Circus on this first evening (it is Christmas eve) of
his first visit home, they would have said, "Here is not only
a rich milord; it is a well one."

He had been in London just long enough to outfit himself
with the beginning of a wardrobe, and in his new clothes
(bought of a tailor which in the old days he could not have
afforded) he was enjoying himself too muc